FOX NEWS DID IT, AND IT IS NOT THE FIRST TIME

Source: AnonOps

Read More

First Tweet of Obama

Yesterday, TNW reported that President Barack Obama will begin tweeting (on occasion) from the @BarackObama account personally.

The announcement was made in a blog post on the Barack Obama 2012 campaign site.

" Obama for America staff will now be managing both accounts, posting daily updates from the campaign trail, from Washington, and everywhere in between. You’ll be hearing from President Obama regularly, too; on Twitter, tweets from the President will be signed “-BO.” "

President Obama has widely been credited as a technologically savvy candidate who was elected in part because of his aggressive stance towards using the Internet and technology to reach voters. Today, in celebration of Father’s Day, President Obama sent out his first signed tweet. And a heartwarming tweet it is. Tech savvy and a family man!

In other news, I just realized President Obama is following me on Twitter. Sweet!

Source: The Next Web

Read More

Obama calls Boehner to White House to talk budget

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has summoned the top Republican in Congress to the White House on Tuesday for talks aimed at averting a government shutdown this weekend.

Negotiations have stalled on legislation blending immediate spending cuts with the money required to run federal agencies through the end of September. Democrats are accusing the GOP of pressing harmful spending cuts and attaching a social policy agenda to the must-pass spending bill. House Speaker John Boehner counters that the White House is pressing gimmicky budget cuts.

FILE - In this April 1, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama gestures while speaking in Landover, Md. President Barack Obama is summoning key lawmakers from both parties to the White House to help speed up budget negotiations and avoid a looming government shutdown at week's end. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

On a separate long-term track, Republicans controlling the House have fashioned plans to slash the budget deficit by more than $5 trillion over the upcoming decade, combining unprecedented spending cuts with a fundamental restructuring of taxpayer-financed health care for the elderly and the poor.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will unveil the GOP budget blueprint Tuesday morning just as Boehner, R-Ohio, heads to the White House for a meeting on the current-year measure with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, his chief nemesis in Congress.

In an op-ed in Tuesday's editions of The Wall Street Journal, Ryan estimated the proposed Republican budget cut at $6.2 trillion over 10 years. And he said later in a nationally broadcast interview that lawmakers must find a way to come to grips with the financially ailing Medicaid and Medicare programs, which Ryan called "the drivers" of the federal debt.

While Ryan said that over the coming decade, his budget would slash $6.2 trillion from Obama's spending proposals, the savings as measured against the Congressional Budget Office "baseline" would be less.

And if Ryan follows past practice, he'll adopt Obama's assumption that overseas military operations will soon cost just $50 billion a year rather than current levels that are roughly three times that amount. Some have challenged such an assumption as unrealistic.

Ryan's program also includes a controversial proposal to convert the traditional Medicare program for the aged into a system by which private insurers would operate plans approved by the federal government.

Current Medicare beneficiaries or workers age 55 and older would stay in the existing system.

At the same time, Republicans propose to sharply cut projected spending on the Medicaid state-federal health program for the poor and disabled and transform it into a block grant program that gives governors far less money than under current estimates, but considerably more flexibility.

GOP officials requiring anonymity to discuss the budget before its release Tuesday said more than $1 trillion in savings would come from Medicaid.

Spending on hundreds of domestic programs — the accounts at the heart of the talks to avoid a government shutdown — would be returned to levels at or below those in effect in 2008, producing savings of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Ryan's goal for tax reform calls for a top tax rate of 25 percent for both individuals and corporations, down from the current top rate of 35 percent for both. That would mirror a proposal by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Ryan embraces the popular goal of simplifying the tax code.

Boehner has ordered up a weeklong stopgap bill to prevent a shutdown. That proposal includes $12 billion in immediate spending cuts and enough money to operate the Pentagon through the end of September.

However, Republicans on Monday disclosed plans to instruct lawmakers "on how the House would operate in the event Senate Democrats shut down the government." And the Obama administration advised government agencies to take the proper steps to prepare for a shutdown.

In a memo to agency officials, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jeffrey Zients, urged agency heads to refine and update contingency plans in the event negotiators don't strike a deal by Friday's deadline. The memo was first reported by The Washington Post.

Boehner has already orchestrated action by Congress to pass a pair of stopgap bills, so far cutting $10 billion from an estimated $1.2 trillion budget to fund the day-to-day operations of government through Sept. 30.

A one-week measure that cuts an additional $12 billion could reassure tea party-backed lawmakers who are among the most vocal in seeking to reduce the size and scope of the government. It could also put pressure on Democrats and the White House to offer greater spending cuts.

But there's no visible movement on an impasse over GOP policy riders attacking Obama's health care and financial reform laws, cutting taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood and reversing a host of Obama's environmental policies.

Under the decidedly arcane congressional budget process, the GOP plan is not actual legislation but provides a nonbinding, theoretical framework for future actions of Congress.

Boehner said in a statement that the $33 billion in current-year spending cuts cited by Democrats "is not enough, and many of the cuts that the White House and Senate Democrats are talking about are full of smoke and mirrors."

Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday the GOP isn't "looking for a government shutdown" but is serious about demanding cuts in spending to curb mounting federal deficits.

Interviewed on CBS's "The Early Show" Tuesday, Ryan predicted that a stopgap bill to keep the government running past a shutdown date at the end of the week will pass the House, but said he wasn't certain about the Senate. Ryan said the Republican-run House has passed three such emergency spending bills this year while the budget legislation has languished in the Senate.

Of GOP demands for billions in budget cuts, he said, "We're looking to get a down payment on this deficit reduction." He also said that lawmakers must come to grips with decisions on how to fix the financially troubled Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Meanwhile, the GOP's decade-long plan far exceeds the $1 trillion-plus reduction outlined in Obama's February budget plan and is on par with recommendations released by Obama's own bipartisan deficit commission in December.

Still, despite cuts already deemed draconian by Democrats, Ryan's plan can't claim a balanced budget by the end of the decade because of promises to not increase taxes or change federal retirement benefits for people 55 and over.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read More

Obama’s Re-election Campaign Puts Facebook Front And Center … Literally

U.S. President’s Barack Obama’s re-election campaign just been kicked off, and it – again – makes clever use of Facebook as a tool for spreading the word and amass supporters.

When you connect to your Facebook account on the campaign website, an interactive banner will appear on the top of the website that shows you which of your friends aren’t “in” yet, profile pictures included. You’re invited to put post a message to your friends’ walls to prompt them to join the ‘Are You In?’ application.

You can easily scroll to your friend list by skipping from one to the next, and you can add an optional message when you opt to post to a friend’s wall.

This is how the message appears (just for illustration, I’m not even a U.S. resident):

Obama’s Facebook page has been ‘liked’ by close to 19 million people.

According to a message posted on the campaign website, they’re starting off ‘small’ both online and offline and plan to boost efforts at a later stage:

One thing that may strike you is that there’s just not as much here as there used to be. As this campaign gets off the ground, we want to start small—online and off—and develop something new in the coming weeks and months.

The idea is to improve upon what’s worked for the past four years, scrap what hasn’t, and build a campaign that reflects the thoughts and experiences of the supporters who’ve powered this movement.

And later:

This is just the beginning. We’ll be adding to this site, opening new field offices, training organizers, and developing plans every single day, and we hope you’ll play an active role.

The first step of all this is an unprecedented program to hold one-on-one conversations with millions of supporters about where they want this campaign to go—look for lots of news about that over the next several weeks as the process unfolds.

YouTube is also one of the things that have apparently worked over the past few years. In emails and text messages sent to supporters earlier today, in which Obama announced that he would be filing papers to launch the 2012 campaign, the video below was promoted.

Twitter, for whatever reason, seems to be not that big a deal for the campaign.

Source: Tech Crunch

Read More

Obama says government shutdown imperils economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says the economic recovery will stall if Congress can't agree on spending cuts and avoid a government shutdown.

The current budget expires next Friday. That means lawmakers must OK a new spending plan before the March 4 deadline to keep much of the government from running out of money and closing. The Republican-run House and Democratic-controlled Senate are bickering over how much to cut.

President Barack Obama meets with Democratic Governors, Friday, Feb. 25, 2011, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

"For the sake of our people and our economy, we cannot allow gridlock to prevail," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "I urge and expect them to find common ground so we can accelerate, not impede, economic growth."

House Republicans have proposed $4 billion in cuts as part of legislation to keep the government functioning through March 18, and they have urged Senate Democrats to accept that approach to avoid closing it down.

Democrats want a short-term extension at current spending levels so the parties can negotiate over how deeply to cut expenditures and begin chipping away at the deficit and the trillions of dollars in accumulated debt.

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, insists that a short-term bill without spending cuts is unacceptable.

Democrats have also rejected as draconian a bill the House passed last week to fund government operations through Sept. 30, the end of the budget year, while slashing spending by $61 billion. Obama has threatened to veto that bill.

Both sides have sought to blame the other pre-emptively as the first government shutdown since 1996 looms.

In the weekly Republican message, freshman Sen. Rob Portman criticized Obama's 2012 budget plan for proposing no changes to entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are huge contributors to overall government spending.

A former White House budget director, Portman, R-Ohio, urged Congress to make the "tough choices all Americans know are necessary to get our fiscal house in order and strengthen our economy."

"Our goal as Republicans is to make sensible reductions in this spending and create a better environment for job growth, not to shut down the government," he said. "Getting our debt and deficits under control is the first step we can take, and the single most important step Washington can take, to get our economy moving and create the jobs we so badly need."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read More

Follow Egypt's example, Obama tells Arab world

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama urged autocratic Middle Eastern allies to look to Egypt's example on Tuesday and encouraged the Iranian people to pursue their quest for democracy.

"You can't maintain power through coercion," Obama said in a stark message to Arab allies of the United States as protests raged in Algeria, Bahrain and Yemen following the ouster of presidents in Egypt and Tunisia.

"At some level, in any society, there has to be consent," Obama told a White House press conference.

Obama also condemned the crackdown in Iran, where lawmakers have demanded the hanging of opposition leaders who called the protests that left two people dead.

US President Barack Obama urged autocratic Middle Eastern allies to
look to Egypt's example on Tuesday and encouraged the Iranian people
 to pursue their quest for democracy (AFP/Jim Watson) 

Iranian MPs singled out Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who had called for protests in Tehran on Monday in support of the Arab uprisings that quickly turned into anti-government demonstrations and ended in clashes.

"People should be able to express their opinions and their grievances and seek a more responsive government," Obama said. "What's been different is the Iranian government's response which is to shoot people and beat people and arrest people.

"Real change in these societies is not going to happen because of terrorism. It's not going to happen because you go around killing innocents. It's going to happen because people come together and apply moral force to a situation," Obama said.

"We have sent a strong message to our allies in the region saying let's look at Egypt's example, as opposed to Iran's example."

Obama said that Egypt was moving in the right direction after the country's military pledged to work toward political reforms and elections, days after protests toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.

"Egypt's going to require help in building democratic institutions and also in strengthening the economy that's taken a hit as a consequence of what happened," he said. "But so far at least, we're seeing the right signals coming out of Egypt."

Obama also praised the military leadership for reaffirming Egypt's international treaties, including with US ally Israel.

"Obviously there's still a lot of work to be done in Egypt itself. What we've seen so far is positive."

Political unrest, meanwhile, has spread across the Middle East.

Thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated Tuesday in the capital Manama, where two protesters died. The rally called for regime change in the Gulf kingdom like that in Egypt and Tunisia.

And in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, pro-regime supporters armed with batons and stones waded into anti-government protesters trying to march on the presidential palace, sparking clashes dispersed by police.

Obama tried to answer critics who suggest his administration was caught flat-footed by the events in Egypt, arguing that he wanted to ensure that the United States did not become the story.

"I think history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt that we were on the right side of history," Obama said

"What we didn't do was pretend that we could dictate the outcome in Egypt because we can't," he said. "So we were very mindful that it was important for this to remain an Egyptian event, that the United States did not become the issue."

But Obama insisted that, if anything, he was actually ahead of the curve.

"If you look at my statements, I started talking about reform two weeks or two and a half weeks before Mr. Mubarak ultimately stepped down, and at each juncture, I think we calibrated it just about right.

"I would suggest that part of the test is that what we ended up seeing was a peaceful transition, relatively little violence, and relatively little, if any, anti-American sentiment or anti-Israel sentiment or anti-Western sentiment."

Source: Yahoo! News

Read More