Barack Obama Latest: Stimulus May Affect Obama’s Agenda

It is a quick, sweet victory for the new president, and potentially a historic one. The question now is whether the $789 billion economic stimulus plan agreed to by Congressional leaders on Wednesday is the opening act for a more ambitious domestic agenda from President Obama or a harbinger of reduced expectations.

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Deal Reached in Congress on $789 Billion Stimulus Plan(February 12, 2009)

President Obama and Gov. Tim Kaine on Wednesday at a parkway project in Springfield, Va., that could get stimulus money.Both the substance of his first big legislative accomplishment and the way he achieved it underscored the scale of the challenges facing the nation and how different a political climate this is from the early stages of recent administrations.

While it hammered home the reality of bigger, more activist government, the economic package was not the culmination of a hard-fought ideological drive, like Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and Great Society programs, orRonald Reagan’s tax cuts, but rather a necessary and hastily patched-together response to an immediate and increasingly dire situation. On the domestic issues Mr. Obama ran and won on — health care, education, climate change, rebalancing the distribution of wealth — the legislation does little more than promise there will be more to come.

In cobbling together a plan that could get through both the House and the Senate, Mr. Obama prevailed, but not in the way he had hoped. His inability to win over more than a handful of Republicans amounted to a loss of innocence, a reminder that his high-minded calls for change in the practice of governance had been ground up in a matter of weeks by entrenched forces of partisanship and deep, principled differences between left and right.

In the end, Congress did not come together to address what Mr. Obama has regularly suggested is a crisis that could rival the Great Depression. What consensus has been forged so far is likely to be tested in the months to come as he faces scrutiny over the effectiveness of the stimulus package and the likelihood that he will have to ask Congress for substantially more money to heal the fractures in the financial system.

So this was hardly a moment for cigars.

If this is the 21st-century version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 100 Days, Mr. Obama seems to be pursuing it more as an urgent but imposed necessity than as a self-selected mission.

While he has deployed his political capital freely to win approval of the package and to begin pushing his version of a financial-system rescue, he has left little doubt that he is eager to move on to the rest of his domestic agenda. At his news conference on Monday night, Mr. Obama said with a hint of exasperation that a costly economic rescue package “wasn’t how I envisioned my presidency beginning.” Regardless of the government’s budgetary straits, Mr. Obama has signaled that he sees his other signature initiatives not just as salvageable but as more urgent than ever.

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President Barack Obama Worried about Stimulus Passing in the House

President Barack Obama faces a barrage of questions on his plans to reinvigorate the economy with a massive stimulus bill and additional billions in bailout money for the financial markets.

Trips Monday and Tuesday to cities hurting under the economic meltdown and a prime-time news conference Monday night show that Obama and his advisers are worried about a looming Senate vote on the stimulus bill, which failed to gather meaningful Republican support during rare weekend debate. The question-and-answer sessions with citizens and later with news reporters will allow Obama to appeal directly for grass-roots backing of his plans.

Both trips were added to Obama's schedule as difficulties with the legislation on Capitol Hill increased. Originally, aides had insisted his time would be better spent in Washington to shepherd the bill rather than traveling the more traditional presidential route around the country, pressuring lawmakers from his bully pulpit.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. However, it must be reconciled with the House version, which totaled $820 billion in spending and tax cuts. With Senate and House negotiators preparing to deal, Obama is likely to push for a bill on his desk for his signature by mid-month.

 

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Top Black Male Athlete Shot and Killed in Suspicious Incident

Billey Joe Johnson Sr. opens the driver’s-side door of his dead son’s Silverado and begins to examine some of the leftover splatter. It clings to the dashboard, leeches out of air conditioning vents. Some of it even found a resting place on the truck’s exterior.

“There goes a hunk of meat right there,” the father said, pointing to a nickel-sized fragment of his son’s brain. “How’d it get over here?”

In the back seat, a geometry book rests next to camouflage clothing and empty boxes of buckshot. Billey Joe Johnson Jr. often woke up at 4 a.m. to hunt before heading to George County High School, where everyone knew him as the football star who would escape crushing rural poverty by running from it.

Piles of recruiting letters litter the back seat, the remnants of life as one of the most sought-after running backs in the Class of 2010. Alabama wanted Billey Joe. So did Notre Dame. And dozens of other schools. He was ready to commit to Auburn. By many accounts Billey Joe was a popular, big-dreaming, clean-living kid. So it’s no wonder his father stands in the yard next to a single-wide trailer, trying to play forensic expert. Searching – like many in this rural community – for answers about who shot his son.

Sheriff’s incident reports and radio reports.

Local authorities stopped Billey Joe for a traffic violation on the morning of Dec. 8, and they say the truck is simply the site of a terrible tragedy. But to the elder Johnson, it’s a crime scene.

Nearly two months later, only one fact is certain: Instead of running out of George County as a football hero, Billey Joe was buried beneath it at the age of 17.

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Your Black News: Dr Boyce and Madeline Talk Politics – Click to Watch

African American Scholar Boyce Watkins and Madeline Talk Black Politics

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Your Black News: Black Surgeon Ben Carson Gets a Movie

TNT's "Gifted Hands" is one of those longform projects that has Emmy written all over it.

It boasts near-flawless direction from Thomas Carter, a vivid teleplay adaptation by John Pielmeier and uniformly magnificent performances, particularly from star Cuba Gooding Jr., who puts himself back onto the Hollywood map here in a way he hasn't since his Oscar-winning turn in 1996's "Jerry Maguire."

Gooding portrays the real-life world-renowned brain surgeon Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and author of a best-selling 1990 autobiography.

It's taken nearly two decades to get Carson's inspiring story to the screen, but Gooding does him more than proud with a portrayal at once sensitively wrought and quietly moving.

In lesser hands (if you'll pardon the pun), this biopic could easily have drifted off into maudlin sap, but Gooding keeps the character of Carson centered and human and the film honoring him wise and surprisingly graphic. (The surgical procedures are showcased in all of their bloody glory, but not so much as to cross the line to gratuitousness.)

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Do Whites Need More Personal Responsbility?- Dr Boyce Watkins

Dr. Boyce Watkins

http://www.boycewatkins.net/

I figured that since black male personal responsibility is on the table for discussion, we might spend a second talking about personal responsibility for others. This is not intended to be offensive, but rather, to change the discussion around a bit and allow us all to take responsibility for our actions. We've heard the chorus about how black males are failing to fulfill their roles in good citizenship, now let's talk about everyone else.

1) The recent mortgage crisis showed millions of Americans losing their homes, largely due to buying homes they could not afford, along with undersaving, overborrowing, underinvesting and overspending. The government followed up by providing a set of welfare packages designed to help these borrowers keep their homes. Perhaps middle class America needs a lesson in personal responsibility, rather than asking for a government handout to save them from their behavior.

2) Speaking of the mortgage crisis, perhaps we should take a look at the personal responsibility being exhibited by banks who made irresponsible loans that threatened to undermine the stability of the US economy. Personal responsibility check called for? I think so.

3) I was on campus last week and saw some statistics about massive alcoholism, rape, arrests and even murder occuring on college campuses every year due to campus drinking. Thousands of students walk off campus as alcoholics each year, and their parents, nor campus administrators do much to stop them. In fact, those who try to stop them are attacked by their parents. Lack of student responsibility? Yes. Poor parenting? Absolutely. Perhaps we need to call in Bill Cosby on that one. But then again, he is afraid to say much about white people.....most of us are. That's why police are quick to raid drug houses in "the hood" but wouldn't dare do raids on college campuses.

4) Speaking of drug use....did you know that most drug abusers in America are white and middle class? A New York Police commissioner took a tremendous amount of heat for noting that 70% of cocaine users are middle class Americans. It is ironic that black males are the ones most likely to be sent to prison for drug possession. It sounds like middle class America is dropping the ball on this personal responsibility thing.

5) Middle class Black America, are you listening? Before you stand and applaud Minister Obama's sermons on Black male irresponsibility, think for a second about the way you are raising your own kids. I can understand when a poor kid wants to be a gangster, since he actually lives near them. But I see alot of middle class kids from the suburbs who do the same thing, and I see their parents spending money like it's going out of style (one paycheck away from being homeless). You too are being hit by the mortgage crisis. You also must deal with the fact that some of you (or shall I say us) have dropped the ball completely in terms of your moral responsibility to actually reach back and help the communities from which you came. No, an annual donation to the NAACP doesn't count, and neither does being the first Black accountant with an all-white firm.

6) Black women, check this out. You know I love you and I am devoted to you. This is also not to say that your claims of Black male behavior are out of line, but let's think for a second. How responsible is it to presume that the breakdown of black marriages is always the man's fault? How have you contributed to your man not being in your home anymore? How good are you at picking the right man in the first place? How supportive are you of allowing that man to see his children when he wants to see them? How controlling are you in terms of jacking his parental rights and dictating the terms under which this man can spend time with his own child? Isn't it a bit irresponsible to say that Black men are the cause of all of your problems? Why not work together with committed brothers to find common ground, as opposed to villifying and further distancing us from one another? While it might be convenient to join the band wagon of Black male extermination, it certainly allows you a convenient alliby for your own broken commitments to personal responsibility. After all, these troubled Black boys are being taught by their mothers.

7) While conservatives stand in line to point fingers at fatherless Black families, have they noticed their own horrific divorce rates? Isn't it a bit irresponsible to condemn people for not getting married when over half of you are ripping your own homes apart via divorce? Don't divorcee homes also end up fatherless too? Perhaps you need to take a note in your own personal responsibililty before saying anything about Black men. In fact, perhaps we should be giving the advice: Most of you are not mature enough to get married in the first place and don't have the personal responsibility to make marriage work.

I am not here to throw down gauntlets of personal responsibility. I am as flawed as the individuals I write about in this article. However, before we start condemning poor Black Americans or Black men, it is important that we remember that we are not as perfect as we might think.

If you talk about personal responsibility, you must do it in a responsible way. Focus on your own house first.