President Barack Obama sought to put some detail behind his lofty drive to double U.S. exports over the next five years, calling the effort imperative to putting people back to work.


Barack Obama - United States - President of the United States - President - History

10/23/2007 - Governor Deval Patrick & Senator Barack Obama and a few thousand friends.

AP - A year ago, President Barack Obama boldly, unequivocally demanded that Israel stop building settlements on the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Today he's left with little choice but to swallow a stinging and very public rebuke from America's closest Mideast ally.

Less than one year ago, President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Cairo in which he promised to redefine the relationship between the U.S. and the Islamic world. The speech was well-received across the Middle East, but it's unclear if perceptions or policy have changed.

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A study out this week indicates that there was a small core group of people who — at the height of the 2008 election — believed Barack Obama was a secret Muslim, and could not be convinced otherwise by news reports or words from the candidate himself. Twenty percent of voters were simply convinced Obama was lying. (Some people changed their opinions, the majority — but not all — eventually coming to believe he was a Christian.) The statistics on the people who believed he was a Muslim weren't particularly surprising. From the Times:

Respondents who were younger, less educated, less politically interested, politically conservative and interpreted the Bible literally were more likely to be among those who shifted from answering that Mr. Obama was Christian to answering that he was a Muslim.

It's an old story: People have a tendency to reject new information that contradicts what they already believe. That includes liberals: Just think of how many times George Bush's National Guard service was hashed over. We just love the thing about people taking the Bible literally changing their minds about him being Christian. Who thought of that question? Not, we're guessing, someone who takes the Bible literally.

New Study Sorts Through Obama-Muslim Myth [Caucus/NYT]

Read more posts by Chris Rovzar

Filed Under: early and often, barack obama, conspiracy theories, politics, religion, studies that try to show that people who believe in the bible are conspiracy theorists

Filed under: Forecasts, Employees, Housing

Most investors understand the relationship between job growth and the U.S. economy: For a sustained U.S. economic expansion to occur, there must be job growth.

Further, politically, the responsibility for lowering unemployment rests with the party in power -- President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. That's how the American political system works. It doesn't matter whether the problem started on your watch -- if you hold the office, you're responsible at election time. End of discussion.

Continue reading This Decade's U.S. Expansion Will Have Few 'Bubble' Construction, Mortgage Jobs

This Decade's U.S. Expansion Will Have Few 'Bubble' Construction, Mortgage Jobs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On February 27 of this year, President Barack Obama signed a one-year extension to the Patriot Act, allowing the government to use court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on people deemed terrorists. Whether you consider it an invasion of privacy or a good way to catch terrorist plots before they hatch, you have to admit that there’s a lot of information in the hands of the government today. What do they know about people? What do they know about...you?

That’s one of the many questions David Bond addresses in his documentary Erasing David, which makes its U.S. premiere this Friday as part of the first night of the SXSW Film Festival. When he read that England was the third most intrusive state in the world, behind only Russia and China, he started to wonder just how much of his private information was out there.

He did more than wonder, in fact—he disappeared. He decided to drop off the grid to see if he could really remain hidden. Not hard if no one’s looking for you, you say? Yeah, well, try this on: he also went and hired two of the best Private Investigators in the country to try and track him down starting with nothing more than his name. Now we’re talking!

More about the film, screening times, and trailer after the jump!

It sounds like a real life Enemy of the State, or the thing that Wired writer did—a real life game of cat and mouse, a thrilling chase film. And to some extent that’s what it is. Watching him hide and seeing the tricks these investigators pull to find him is certainly compelling. But beyond the thrill of the hunt and the striking amount of private information that these pros easily produce, Erasing David also presents other interesting issues, such as the terror and paranoia that comes with being chased and the loss of identity that comes from no longer being able to go where you want to go, to call whomever you want. If you have to disappear—if you can’t be who you are—then who are you?

The questions raised in this fascinating film are interesting, relevant, and probably unanswerable. But they’re questions we should all be asking ourselves, and our government. What Bush/Cheney started has taken on a life of its own here in the United States. It’s something we should all be thinking about. And hey, if that gets old, there’s still an exciting chase to watch! It’s a win-win!

Chasing David screens Friday, March 12th at 8:00 PM at the Hideout and Tuesday, March 16th at 11:00 AM at the G-Tech Theater in the Austin Convention Center. For the full schedule, see my.SXSW or B-Side.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Two-times British Open winner Padraig Harrington will be a guest of U.S. president Barack Obama at the White House St Patrick's Day party next week, the Irish golfer told reporters on Wednesday.

Barack Obama has appointed designer and statistician Edward Tufte to the stimulus-monitoring Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. To a certain segment of the internet, this is like learning that Admiral Ackbar is the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. More »

MIAMI, March 10 (Reuters) - Two-times British Open winner Padraig Harrington will be a guest of U.S president Barack Obama at the White House St Patrick's Day party next week, the Irish golfer told reporters on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday renewed America's commitment to the recovery and reconstruction of earthquake-devastated Haiti, telling visiting President Rene Preval he knows the crisis has not passed.

During a talk at the University of Alabama yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts went ballistic, relatively, over President Obama's State of the Union speech, in which the president condemned the Supreme Court's recent ruling on corporate political spending. Roberts said he was fine with anyone criticizing the court, but:

"On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum. The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

Roberts also added that he wasn't sure why justices are still attending a speech that has "denigrated into a political pep rally." Granted, it's not exactly an epic smackdown, but it's still more aggressive than Samuel Alito silently mouthing "not true" to himself. For a Supreme Court justice, calling something "troubling" is like normal people calling it "total bullshit." And White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wasn't going to let it slide, which is why he released this somewhat milquetoast rebuttal:

"What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans," Gibbs said. "The President has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response."

What's important to remember is that this feud goes back years. When President Obama was a senator, he voted against the confirmation of John Roberts because, he said, Roberts "far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak." Later, Roberts "accidentally" screwed up the most important, memorable moment of Obama's life by flubbing the Oath of Office. Obama had his revenge at the State of the Union, and now Roberts is publicly questioning Obama's grasp of decorum. With each man now plotting the next way he can undermine the other, this is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen.

Gibbs Fires Back At Chief Justice Roberts Over Obama Criticism [HuffPo]
John Roberts: Scene At Obama's State Of Union Was 'Very Troubling' [HuffPo]

Read more posts by Dan Amira

Filed Under: the supremes, barack obama, john roberts, not true, politics, robert gibbs, state of the union

Three prominent politicians, two from the Bay State, found themselves commenting on the health care reform President Barack Obama is advocating this week. Whether they wanted to or not.

• On Monday, Senator Scott Brown called the health care plan being pushed by some Congressional Democrats "wrong" at the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU) conference. Brown knows his audience and sticks to his message: no backroom deals, state's rights, jobs, no reconciliation. Brown is also clearly not talking to Bostonist. "As I speak to people all across this country, they’re not really talking about health care,” he said. Come to Bostonist's kitchen for health care talk.

• Mitt Romney has been selling books all across America as a not so subtle precursor to a possible 2012 presidential campaign. A Herald report suggest his time as Governor of Massachusetts, specifically his health care reform plan, could again be his fatal flaw. The Herald reported conservatives are making Romney's plan an issue since it subsidizes abortions, or at least one blogger said so on Twitter.

• And, of course, what health care reform blog would be complete without a Sarah Palin reference. The latest from Wasilla is that her family went to Canada for health care when she was just a kid in Skagway, Alaska. Her father took her brother to Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territory a couple of times in the 1960's. Canadian style, universal single-payer health care death panels must have scarred the future former less-than-one-term governor for life.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's top environmental adviser urged the natural gas industry on Tuesday to disclose the chemicals it uses in drilling, warning that the development of massive U.S. shale gas reserves could be held back otherwise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, weighing in on the Senate's efforts to pass a climate change bill, gathered Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday to try to jumpstart an overhaul of U.S. energy policy.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Wednesday that some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge could leave the country before President Barack Obama's announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawal.

Americans have come to detest Congress ever more deeply as it nears the end of a nasty fight over health care, more than half still back President Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama meets with the president of Haiti Wednesday morning and later flies to Missouri for another gathering on health care reform.

Americans have come to detest Congress ever more deeply as it nears the end of a nasty fight over health care. But more than half still back President Barack Obama, a bright spot for a Democratic Party counting on its leader to help stave off expected losses in elections this fall.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge could leave the country before President Barack Obama's announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawal.