Sen. Burris won’t run in 2010
After just a few months in office and having fiercely resisted calls for his resignation, Illinois Senator Roland Burris has decided Congress is not his calling after all.The Chicago Democrat appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama plans to announce on Friday he won’t seek election to a full six-year term in 2010. Word leaked out a day early, with sources in Chicago and Washington confirming Burris’ plans to forgo the midterm election.The Chicago Sun-Times broke the news, reporting that Burris had raised only about $20,000 toward what undoubtedly would have been a very expensive campaign. The newspaper also quoted a source as saying that Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, was concerned about his legacy.He entered office under a big cloud that never cleared. Burris was appointed on Dec. 30 by former Governor Rod Blagojevich, who later was impeached and indicted on corruption charges — including trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat.Burris escaped a perjury charge last month when prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence aganist him. Burris declared his appointment “perfectly legal” and said he had never offered the ousted governor anything.For more Reuters political news, click here.Photo credit: Reuters/Frank Polich (Burris reacts to audience applause after speaking at a Chicago, church in March)
Hawaiian ‘shaka’ greeting comes natural to Obama
KAILUA, HI – Barack Obama may be the first U.S. president who can successfully pull off the shaka, a Hawaiian greeting Hawaiians say has various meanings, from “hang loose” and “cool” to “thanks.” The hand gesture, also a common greeting in surfer culture, consists of curling the three middle fingers and extending the thumb and little finger. The president-elect, looking uber-cool with his White Sox baseball cap on backwards, flipped the shaka to a crowd of about 30 people as he left a gym on a Marine Corps base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he is vacationing. Obama, born and largely raised on Oahu, then walked over to greet the crowd, which had waited through a brief cloudburst to see him. Righting his baseball cap as he walked, he shook hands before posing with four babies.
People here are missing the point. We’re arguing that the media is not being the media. Have they even analyzed Obama’s plans or how he’s going to lead? What about what Obama has done for Illinois? You know, like a journalist for Reuters is supposed to do?
Journalistic integrity is dead in this country.
To Obama, it’s Sweet Home Indiana
KEMPTON, Indiana – Barack Obama, vying for support from Hoosiers before Indiana’s Tuesday primary, reconnected with his roots in the state with a visit to a farmhouse owned by his family for generations. The white Victorian home in rural Kempton sits on land owned by Obama’s fourth great-grandfather, who passed it down several generations within the family of Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham. Ann Dunham was from Kansas but she later moved to Hawaii, where Obama was raised. The Kempton farmhouse was built by William Riley Dunham, a great uncle of Obama. After the Dunham family gave it up, it was used at one stage as a funeral home and was recently purchased by Sean Clements, who plans to spruce it. As part of an effort to show a folksier side of the Illinois senator, the campaign planned the visit to the house as an outdoor potluck dinner with Clements and his family and friends. But the weather didn’t cooperate. It was chilly with big gusts of wind that toppled the foldup tables set up in the back yard. So the tables had to be taken down and the dinner was scrapped in favor of a walk-around tour by Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Sasha, 6, and Malia, 9. But there were no shortages of other opportunities to show the “regular guy” side of Obama, who has said he is determined to counter efforts by his opponents to portray him and his wife as “elitist, pointy-headed intellectual types.” The Obamas visited a picnic gathering in Noblesville at lunchtime. In the evening, they stopped by a roller-skating rink for an “ice cream social” with supporters. Obama did not skate, though his daughters did.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
Photo: Reuters/Jason Reed
Reply to Connie
You need to “wake up,” not the rest of America. I made a six figure income last year and worry everyday if I’ll have enough to make ends meet. I am wide awake and all the media spin, lies, and bogus Elitist is doing nothing for my family. The Clinton’s bogus lies.
Gingrich: Obama is ‘far left’ with the right smile
INDIANAPOLIS – Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich says Barack Obama remains the best bet to become the Democratic presidential nominee and would be a formidable opponent for Republican John McCain.
Speaking to the French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Gingrich said McCain had benefited from Obama’s recent difficulties, including controversial comments by the Illinois senator’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“But Obama remains a formidable opponent. He is also the most probable Democrat nominee, even if he is not as untouchable as he was before,” said Gingrich, who led his party’s takeover of the House of Representatives in what was known as the Republican Revolution of 1994.
Gingrich was eventually forced out of that role and has gone on to become an author. Though he remains a conservative, Gingrich relishes sometimes taking positions that are seen as contrarian to members of his party.
But he likely was toeing a party line to come when he added: “Obama is not just any left-wing politician. … He is a far left-wing politician, but with a beautiful smile.” Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
Mike: you posted that “Obama’s Church Promotes Communism and Africa (not America)?”
Are you feeling okay today? I am not sure why any church should promote America. Surely churches are about God or perhaps other higher powers.
If there is mention of blacks and Africa, maybe its because that is where the blacks where captured and enslaved to be brought to America to suffer. Perhaps you might study the history of slavery in America and consider how God might view that in terms of the actions of those that did the enslaving …. Not suggesting you are one of the people that did the enslaving, just think you might try to get a sense of where the church is coming from.
And to then you go on to find a term that can be construed as communism if you are being willfuly ignorant and reading a few words out of context in isolation. I would not be surprised if what it means, and I am taking a leap of faith that you are indeed being honest with the few words you put forward and that you indeed found them in something to do with the church, is to get the black people on par with the rest of America and particularly the white population. It would venture it has nothing to do with communism and you are likely hate mongering here.
And, I am sure that your weak comment “it seems that” is just that – a weak comment that leaves you room when you are corrected. The black church does not put itself above God any more than the Pope does. Please stop stirring the racism pot. You might go to your own church and give its articles and its leadership equal scrutiny and write a balanced report on both. You might try looking at the history of all the major faiths and how they have evolved. Try looking throught the dark ages of the Catholic Church as a starter and see if you like what you see there.
Finally at the end of all the garbage you have created and presented as some kind of fact, you make false accusations of Obama. You know, there are laws against slander….. Disturbing indeed…..
I suggest you look at yourself in them mirror, you will see in there, precisely what you are trying to paint the black church and Obama to be…..
May God bless you and forgive you….
Democrats mix criticism of McCain with praise
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – Republican Sen. John McCain’s personal narrative as a war hero in Vietnam has Democrats treading carefully when they criticize him.
Instead of trading barbs with each other, Democratic White House hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton this week have trained their attention on McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, have assailed McCain for his support for the Iraq war and his backing of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
But they have made clear the attacks are not personal.
Just before accusing McCain of lacking an understanding of how to fix the struggling economy and of pushing policies that amount to “standing on the sidelines” of the housing crisis, Obama at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, commended McCain for his service to his country.
“Most of us know his biography and it is worthy of admiration. This is a man who is a genuine American hero and has served his country with distinction,” Obama said.
“My argument with John McCain is not his biography. It’s with his policies,” he added.
McCain, a war hero? What’s so heroic about dropping bombs on innocent people from on high? Vietnam was no threat to the United States just as Iraq was not a threat. Not only does he want us to continue the carnage in Iraq, this “hero” now makes jokes about attacking Iran as well. Keep McNasty on a leash out in Arizona.
I am not the judge and jury of Senator Burris or of John Edwards or of any of the members ofCongress who have been in the news lately as being under scrutiny and more to come. I startedthrowing up a trial balloon laced with plenty of speculative conjecture. The Democrats are solivid concerning Dick Cheney possibly protecting the entire country by simply scotching a vitalreport so that if leaked may have caused our citizens great harm. Maybe Mr. Cheney may have feltthat with the evidence of tomfoolery running through the personal lives of these politicians whohave been fingered, he mummed up so that the information did not wind up in some chorus girl’stape recorder or in a bag man’s receptacle. My wife and kids are alive and well. Whatever you didMr. Cheney, Thank you.http://blogs.reuters.com/ffrontrow/w p-comments-post.php7/12/2009