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Obama: 'I'm Skinny...But Tough' Tuesday, October 27, 2009 7:30 AM President Barack Obama has lashed back at critics who fear he lacks the steel to be a successful president, saying "I'm skinny ... but I'm tough." Obama, who is trying to navigate a climate of sharp political partisanship, said he was spoiling for a fight to enact his ambitious agenda. "There are people saying mean things about me and folks are worried," Obama said on Monday, as he headlined a pair of Florida Democratic Party fundraisers that racked up a total of 1.5 million dollars. "Just 'cause I'm skinny doesn't...

Obama's Nobel: The Last Thing He NeedsBy Nancy Gibbs – 1 hr 51 mins ago The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise. Inspirational words have brought him a long way - including to the night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that we "join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand." **SNIP** At this moment many...

NEW YORK – A New York Police Department rookie just couldn't wait to get started. One of the NYPD's newest officers made his first arrest Thursday just minutes after graduating from the Police Academy in a ceremony at Madison Square Garden. Officer Dariel Firpo, 23, was leaving the midtown Manhattan ceremony when he saw a 79-year-old man being robbed of his wallet and thrown to the ground by a mugger, police said. The mugger tried to run away, but Firpo caught him without incident, they said.

WASHINGTON – Days from his first Moscow summit, President Barack Obama declared Thursday that former Russian President Vladimir Putin "still has a lot of sway" in his nation and needs an in-person reminder the Cold War is over. On next week's trip, Obama will meet not only with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev but with Putin, the prime minister who hand-picked Medvedev as his successor. Said Obama: "I think that it's important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated. ... Putin has one foot in...

Just over a month ago, President Barack Obama broke a 30-year embargo on US relations with Iran: He offered goodwill not only to "Iranians" but to the country's government. Less than two weeks after the Nowruz adress, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the US military command overseeing Iran and the Gulf, offered a far different portrayal of Iran to a Senate committee: Iranian activities and policies constitute the major state-based threat to regional stability. ... Iran is assessed by many to be continuing its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, which would destabilize the region and likely spur a...

Obama is flying to St. Louis today for another "town hall" meeting. How much does it cost each time he takes a boondoggle? 747 Fuel costs, cargo transport fuel costs, limos, SUV's, his posse, etc?

OUR OPINION: First months reveal a poised, disciplined, pragmatic politician President Barack Obama has run a fast race thus far. His first 100 days in office have been remarkably productive, particularly for someone who was serving in the Illinois state Senate only five years ago. A successful start augurs well for the rest of his tenure, but critics have reason to remain skeptical. Huge deficits, a seemingly limitless agenda and Washington's enduring partisan divide are just some of the challenges that could trip up this presidency. In truth, the 100-day test is an artificial political construct. It is too little...

Given all the hoopla and high expectations surrounding the new president, it's easy to overlook how he has shifted since the election in both tone and substance. As we approach the 100-day mark of his presidency, Barack Obama has broken or bent many tenets of his campaign, including promises on war, spending and good government. In terms of tone, Obama promised to be a hope-filled change agent who could fix our politics and "heal a nation." He would do it by refusing to appoint lobbyists to his administration, increasing transparency in government, and forging new bipartisan consensus. His campaign promised...

A key House Republican Thursday called for a hearing to investigate a Department of Homeland Security report that highlights security risks posed by extremist groups and disgruntled veterans. Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked for a hearing into the matter, one day after the committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said he was “dumbfounded” by how the agency could release such a report. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has endured a barrage of congressional criticism over the report, on Thursday made the rounds of the morning news programs, appearing in five interviews...

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Texas fits the Department's profile of potential domestic terrorism described in their newly released report titled, " Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment". Islamic extremists' acts of domestic terrorism were recently given the dignity, by Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano and President Obama, of being classified as man-made disasters, and abroad, the "war on terror" has been reclassified as an "overseas contingency plan". But an entire non-Islamic class, or perhaps by extension entire states, according to the report, are not afforded such considerate and cordial titles if...

President Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets -...

 1.  Do They all Do This? A good argument could be made that Jacques Chirac was deeply unpopular (along with his foreign minister Dominque de Villepin) in the US and the UK. Even more so was Gerhard Schröder, and to a lesser extent his postmodern foreign minister Joschka Fischer, veteran of the 1960s Days of Rage. No need to comment on the controversial career of Vladimir Putin. But one rarely sees Mr. Sarkozy trash Chirac, or Merkel dump on Schröder, or Medvedev reject Putin. Is the trashing of your predecessor an Obama phenomenon? Why do transnationalist, internationalist European leaders not attack...

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Barack Obama plans to begin addressing America's immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as "policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system," said the official, Cecilia Munoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in...

Numb. At some point, that's about how one feels, isn't it? Didn't rogue nuclear power North Korea, in violation of yet another United Nations resolution, test-fire a long-range missile? Didn't this occur while President Barack Obama delivered a speech on nuclear disarmament? Isn't North Korea the same country that helped Syria build a nuclear reactor, showing North Korea's clear intention to sell and export its nuclear technology? And in response, didn't the President call for the United Nations Security Council -- the one that provides Russia and China with a veto -- to … take action?! Did the traditional media,...

The Cold War's Most Dangerous Legacy [Mark Steyn] Jonah, I couldn't agree more on the Soviets' "psychological contamination." I think the Obama response to the North Korean test is a good example of that: The wish for "a world without nuclear weapons" is not merely a pacifist delusion but one that obliquely subscribes to the false equivalence so assiduously promoted during the Cold War. I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep if I read in the paper that New Zealand and Switzerland had decided to become nuclear powers. It's not the technology (which can't be un-invented, any more than the rifle...

FBI InfraGard warns of a crescendo of public concern about Obama's eligibility April 05, 2009 11:14 Tasked by the FBI to provide "informational analysis" on conditions which could be construed as potentially harmful to civil order and national security, InfraGard, of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), issued an unclassified Protective Intelligence Communication report in March 2009 regarding the "crescendo" of public concern about Obama's presidential eligibility. Authored by Dr. Lyle J. Rapacki, Protective Intelligence Specialist and Agent, the report summarizes the substance of legal challenges to Obama on the question of his constitutional eligibility and concludes that if...

In a blow to Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon has decided to purchase to end funding of the F-22 fighter jet. The decision by Defense Secretary Robert Gates will rouse widespread opposition in Congress and is likely to bog down the 2010 budget approval process, with F-22 supporters maneuvering to secure more money. The Pentagon will fund four of the radar-evading stealth fighters in the upcoming 2009 emergency war-spending request, but those additional aircraft will do little to keep the production line in Marietta, Ga., open beyond 2011. Lockheed Martin is the main contractor for the F-22, each of which costs...

The basic bargain is sound: countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them.” -- President Barack Obama, Prague, April 6, 2009 As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, the President of the United States wants America to disarm: “Countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament.” It is hard to imagine a more destructive goal. A nuclear disarmed America would lead to massive and widespread killing, more genocide, and very possibly the nuclear holocaust worldwide nuclear disarmament is meant to prevent. There is nothing moral, let alone realistic, about this goal. Here...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. private sector job losses accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations, according to a report by ADP Employer Services on Wednesday. KEY POINTS: * ADP said private employers cut 742,000 jobs in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs. * Economists had expected 655,000 private-sector job cuts in March, according to a recent Reuters poll. COMMENTS: IAN SHEPHERDSON, CHIEF U.S. ECONOMIST, HIGH FREQUENCY ECONOMICS, VALHALLA, NEW YORK: "This is very disappointing but not a huge surprise. We wondered if the inflection in some of the recent data...

Is this Pres. Obama’s new approach to diplomacy: sending his spokesman out to mock foreign leaders who dare to question his profligate spending, even when those leaders have sacrificed to support US national security policy? Apparently so . . . Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs made the rounds of the morning shows today, and interestingly it was GMA’s Diane Sawyer who asked the toughest questions. She displayed the chart shown in the screencap which demonstrates that PBO is spending, as a percentage of GDP, about 5x as much on his stimulus package as our European allies. When Sawyer quoted Czech Prime...

For months, this newspaper has opposed President Obama's bold, forward-thinking agenda. What a colossal mistake. We realize now that we were merely clinging to the discredited ideas of the past. Holding on to disposable relics like tradition, religion and the Constitution only delays the glorious new world that awaits us all. President Obama has shown America a bright, glimmering future full of widely shared prosperity and national nice-to-each-otherness. Only by universally embracing the President's vision can this nation succeed and prosper. Resistance will bring nothing but social distortion, widespread panic and madness. President Obama has shown us all that to...

I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the Right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the “Bush Is Hitler” crowd on the Left. Speaking of this crowd, have you seen any “I am so sorry” postings from that quarter as Obama continues and even escalates the former president's war policy in Afghanistan and attempts to consolidate his military occupation of Iraq? Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the Left as we figure...

and the people still sit silent as they watch Obamanation grow in unbridled power. Geithner Asks Congress for even Broader Power to Seize private Firms as the average American stumbles through their daily routine as if nothing is happening. (snip) The American people would never trade personal freedom for the false promise of federally redistributed free-stuff under some ill-fated socialist experiment, unless they were first threatened with a soup line existence. And so it shall be… (snip) With their backs against the wall, confused by a daily diet of media manipulated headlines aimed at scaring the public into submission, convinced...

After only two months of the Obama presidency, Americans are horrified, angry, depressed, and on the verge of full-scale revolt against the president and his toadying Socialist acolytes for doing their best to destroy our once-vibrant economy, inflict decades of debt on our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and usher in what historians will surely record as The Age of The Hubristic and Incompetent Presidency. This assessment is borne out by polls, man-and-woman-in-the-street interviews, escalating unemployment figures, and creeping inflation which threatens to become the hyperinflation that will put the final nail in an economy that up until 2006 – when...

Last year during the presidential campaign, some comedians explained the reason there were so many more jokes being made on television about John McCain than Barack Obama was because nothing about Obama was funny.  The One was a bit too perfect and free of flaws to provide much fodder for joke writers.  Never mind that he had said there were 57 states.  Or that he frequently stammered through sections of speeches when his teleprompter malfunctioned.  Or any of the other mistakes he made.  Most of them received little media coverage and even less ridicule from comics.The New York Times even...

China condemns US warship deployment as tensions mount Jane Macartney in Beijing and Tim Reid in Washington Chinese Navy officers reacted with annoyance today when it emerged that the United States had sent a destroyer to back up a surveillance vessel in the South China Sea after it was harassed by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sailors. The decision by President Obama to send an armed escort for US surveillance ships in the area follows the aggressive and co-ordinated manoeuvres of five Chinese boats on Sunday. The vessels harassed and nearly collided with the unarmed USNS Impecccable. One unidentified officer quoted...

On Nov. 5, 2008, Americans woke up to a very real Marxist coup — although most didn't realize it. I sat down and cried while a huge crowd gathered and were cheering. I intuitively knew something was very wrong. After watching Barack Hussein Obama aggressively pursue his agenda as president, I now understand why. Most Marxist coups rely on deception — and that was certainly true of this one. Just about everything Obama said during the campaign was a calculated lie. His handlers and key supporters were equally willing to lie and deceive to gain advantage. Once Marxists seize power...

Amongst the several revenue-raising proposals in President Obama’s $3.9-trillion budget proposal is a carbon tax that will impact all American families. His budget aims to raise $646 billion through a cap-and-trade tax on energy. Last year, Peter Orszag, who was then Director of the Congressional Budget Office and is now President Obama’s Director for the Office of Management and Budget, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on a similar proposal. Speaking about a cap-and-trade proposal to cut carbon emissions by 15%, he said it would cost the average household about $1,300 a year through higher energy costs. He...

Tired, Frustrated Obama Inspires Zero Confidence, Scares MillionsMarch 9, 2009 **SNIP** OBAMA: By the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system, and the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people is that if coming in the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. REPORTER: Right. OBAMA: You know, I have more than enough to do without having to worry about the financial system. RUSH: Now, that's an inspiring thing to say. I have more than enough to do without having...

Obama's hopes DaschledHis ties to the former senator may have blinded him to potential ethics problems -- but in the end, the president takes the blame. By Mike Madden Feb. 4, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- Things would probably have gone a lot more smoothly for Tom Daschle if the whole country worked the way Washington does, at least at its most stratified levels. You serve in a high government post for a while, then you lose an election, and your friends step in to support you with helpful things like, say, a $1 million-a-year job in private equity, and a...

Russia, EU launch talks on new strategic relations09:45' 28/06/2008 (GMT+7) European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana (R-L) meet the media after the two-day Russia-EU summit in Khanty-Mansiysk, central Russia, June 27, 2008. Russia and the EU announced here Friday that they will open talks on new strategic relations in coming days.(Xinhua Photo) The Russia-EU summit concluded Friday in Russia's West Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, with the issuing of a joint statement saying that Russia and the European Union (EU) will hold the...

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (CNN)–At a campaign event saturday, Sen. Barack Obama called his distant cousin, Vice President Dick Cheney, "the crazy uncle in the attic." Obama was referencing the recent revelation by the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, that he and the vice president are distantly related. "For the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot," he told the crowd of about 500 at Converse College in Spartanburg. "The name Dick Cheney, my cousin, will not appear on the ballot. We tried to hide the cousin thing. Everybody has a black...

A 17-YEAR -old rookie plumber has burned down a £5 million ($12 million) waterside mansion in southwest England, after a soldering task during his first day on the job went horribly wrong. The historic mansion in Kingswear, Devon, was undergoing a £2 million renovation when a fire ripped through the eight-bedroom house overnight.

Will the Broncos get an early Christmas present from Santa Claus Indiana?, QB Jay Cutler You can imagine what the sports media storm is like here in Colorado right now after the lackluster performance by the Denver Broncos offense last night in their 19 - 10 loss vs. the Kansas City Chiefs. An interesting fact about the Broncos first round draft choice from earlier this year, QB Jay Cutler is from Santa Claus, Indiana. 6 Jay Cutler, Quarterback Height: 6' 3" Weight: 233 lbs. College: Vanderbilt Born: in Santa Claus, Ind. Acquired: Draft #1 (11th overall), 2006 Pro Year: R...

Michael Moore says he is even more popular these days and Repbulicans come up to hug him. Even if you could fit your arms around him, would you want to hug this guy?

My rookie officers were third division, says 'bully' skipper By Stewart Payne (Filed: 17/01/2006) A submarine captain accused of bullying his officers told a court martial yesterday that some were so inexperienced it was like having lower division footballers on a Premiership pitch. Capt Robert Tarrant, 44, who was commander of the nuclear submarine Talent, told a court martial that he expected the very highest standards from his crew. He said he used a leadership style he had learned serving in the Falklands conflict. "I discovered that the margin of error between operational safety and therefore operational success and operational...

LISLE, Ill. - Nedal Haddad of Chicago understood his new job as a cab driver entailed delivery — taking passengers from one point to another, that is. He couldn't have imagined it involved delivering babies. That's what happened Friday, about a week into his new job, when the 37-year-old picked up a pregnant woman in suburban Plainfield and began driving her to nearby Edward Hospital. Before they could arrive at the Naperville hospital, the woman — whose mother and sister were also in the cab — began giving birth. "She said, 'I think I'm going to have the baby,'" he...

Ben Roethlisberger can take it full circle today against the Ravens. Back on Sept. 19 in Baltimore, the rookie quarterback was flung into the NFL's high seas, sink or swim. Today, he can skipper the Steelers to the AFC's treasure island, the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. "That first game, he got his feet wet,'' receiver Hines Ward said. "He's in the water now." Roethlisberger went from "some little young kid who's just out of college" -- Alan Faneca's infamous description -- to royalty in Pittsburgh in the past three months. He's 12-0, a Pro Bowl alternate, Dapper Dan...

I received the installation CD today for Microsoft Office Powerpoint 2003. Of course, it comes with no written instructions, and I'm rather stumped as to how to proceed further. Example; I try and import a 'folder' with several pics and I get either none, or just one - during my little test runs. Any tips from fellow FReepers?...My goal is to be able to take a series of digital pics and snaz them up a bit, and look like a wizard. I'm failing tonight in the wizard department! It appears I've installed correctly, but now I'm stalled.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- LeBron James dominated the competition to the delight of his audience, then eyeballed the scoreboard for his own satisfaction. With 14 points, seven rebounds and six assists Tuesday night, the most talked-about high school draft pick in NBA history thrilled a huge crowd that waited several hours to see him make his pro basketball debut. But he said what he'll remember most is the outcome of this summer league game -- Cleveland Cavaliers 107, Orlando Magic 80. ``Victory,'' James said. ``Victory, and just stepping on an NBA court for the first time. ``I know last year...