In remembrance of 9 11

13 years ago I was working as a Health Consultant at a consulting firm in Washington Dc. A lot of the companies we represented were housed in the World Trade Center. That morning when I showed up at work my assistant told me a plane hit one of the Twin Towers. We all thought it was an accident. I returned to my desk after getting some coffee and was told another plane hit the other Twin Tower. We then knew it was premeditated. Then at 9:39 that morning the Pentagon was hit. I remember the entire company rushing to the conference room to watch a report from CNN about the bombing, and the president of the company said we could go home if we wanted. The building was empty in minutes. I remember the streets. There were military planes flying over head , and sirens. It was like a scene right out of the King Kong or Godzilla movies, where people were running every which way, trying to get to safety. Trying to get to schools to get their kids. Trying to get home. The busses were packed with everyone trying to get on. Even the trains were packed. It used to take me about 30 minutes to get home from work. That day it took me about 4 hours. I will never forget that. I remember trying to call my mom to tell her I was ok, but the lines were so overwhelmed that I couldn’t get a call through until that evening. I will never forget that day. Nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the attacks.
My thoughts are once again with all those who lost loved ones on that tragic morning. I think about those who were killed, honoring the sacrifices of the first responders, and remembering the spirit of unity that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11.

Blacks outvoted whites in 2012, the first time on record

Washington (CNN) – A new Census Bureau report provides more evidence that the changing demographics of the United States are having a deep impact at the voting booth.

The report on the 2012 election found that for the first time on record, black voters turned out to the presidential polls at a higher rate than whites. More than 66% of eligible blacks voted in the presidential contest that pit President Barack Obama against Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Only 64.1% of whites turned out to vote.
The report was released Wednesday.



This the first time since 1968 that blacks turned out at a higher rate the whites.
In addition to blacks turning out at a higher rate, the number of Asian and Hispanic voters grew from 2008 to 2012. Hispanics added 1.4 million people and Asians added over 500,000. Between 1996 and 2012, blacks, Asians and Hispanics all saw their percentage of the voting population increase.
"Over the last five presidential elections, the share of voters who were racial or ethnic minorities rose from just over one in six in 1996 to more than one in four in 2012," said Thom File, the report's author.
The highest turnout of blacks, in addition to the growing number of Hispanics and Asians, could also explain Obama's success in defeating Romney.
According to CNN exit polls, 93% of African-Americans, 71% of Hispanics and 73% of Asians supported Obama over Romney.

Happy St Patrick's Day

First Lady Michelle Obama's Vogue Cover

After weeks of speculating (and speculating), the first lady's second cover for the fashion glossy has arrived -- and it's absolutely stunning. As expected, photographer Annie Leibovitz shot Michelle, who wore a blue and purple Reed Krakoff sheath plucked straight from her very own closet. The green background, the cool color palette and the choice to wear Reed Krakoff definitely reminded us of FLOTUS' official portrait. Vogue's fashion editor Tonne Goodman led the team styling Mrs. O and the president, who appears in a photo inside the mag with the first lady. Also in the editorial? A third shot of Michelle wearing an elegant Michael Kors ball skirt and sweater. To accompany the shoot, the first couple was interviewed by Jonathan Van Meter, discussing parenting, marriage and their duties while presiding in the White House. Of course, since this is Vogue, they also talked fashion. “If you’re comfortable in your clothes it’s easy to connect with people and make them feel comfortable as well,” Michelle said. FLOTUS certainly looks comfortable on her new Vogue cover, which includes her three second term signatures: bangs, Reed Krakoff, and, of course, her amazingly toned arms. Last time she covered the style bible, Michelle's designer of choice was Jason Wu -- with another Reed Krakoff pick this time around, it's clear we've entered a new era of FLOTUS fashion. Look out for the April issue of Vogue on newsstands in the next couple of weeks. --courtesy, Huffington Post

Exactly.

LOL

The President takes it all in

"Wait y'all let me take all this in...I wanna see this one more time." President Obama said as he paused and turned around to look at the Inaugural crowd before he left, adding "I'm not gonna see this again."

Question of the Day

I smiled when I read that President Barack Obama  would use Dr. Martin Luther King’s bible to take his oath of office in the Inauguration. Considering African American history, it felt like a full circle moment. I’m certain Dr. King’s dream inspired the vision, hope, and presidency of Barack Obama. As we observed the second-term inauguration of President Barack Obama, now is a good time to ask: what does the legacy of Dr. King mean for little black boys and little black girls and our nation at large?

The President and his better half at the Inaugural Ball 2013

Beyonce pretend Sings the National Anthem at the 2013 Inauguration

WTF Moment- ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ chairman: Slavery wouldn’t have happened if slaves were armed

Pic of the day

President Obama gets caught in Spider-Man's web.

:-)

Trump: Hurricane Sandy Good Luck for Obama

"Hurricane Sandy is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars," Trump tweeted.

And, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, he extended President Obama a records deadline Tuesday. Showing no signs the birther campaign is going away, the racist asshole is doubling down on his $5 million offer, should President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate and passport from college.

Being the nice guy that he is, Trump extended the records deadline for Obama, in light of Superstorm Sandy. This was his twitter message:

"Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama's favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday," Trump tweeted to his fans.

You can't make this shit up. Excuse my french, but what a fucking asshole.  The word 'asshole' is a major understatement. You know, the trick in life is to set the bar real low, so you can walk right over it, and Donald Trump still trips.

We had more horse buggies than bayonets, and others

In my humble opinion, President Obama ran circles around Mitt Wrongney in the final debate last night. Mitt Wrongney went to school last night, and The President was the teacher.


The focus of the debate was supposed to be foreign policy. Much of it was neither foreign nor policy, and on several occasions it looked like Mitt Wrongney was about to cry as The President called him out on everything he said that was wrong. So, I was okay with it. And also, Mitt Wrongney agreed with what President Obama more than I have ever seen in a presidential debate. Mitt Wrongney did say it would be nice to be funny “not on purpose.” I didn’t think he meant to be as funny as he was.

Here's some of my favorite zingers from last night;

"Governor Romney, I'm glad you realize that Al Qaeda is a threat ... The Cold War has been over for 20 years," declared Obama, criticizing Romney for saying that Russia is the greatest threat to the United States.

"The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back."

”Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships.”

“Well, Governor Romney’s right. You are familiar with jobs being shipped overseas, because you invested in companies that were shipping jobs overseas.”

"We know you love teachers, I love teachers, we all love teachers." --from Bob Schieffer to Governor Mitt Wrongney who went on and on about his love of teachers. It was obvious that even he was exasperated.

Why the hell is it currently tied 50-50?

If the third presidential debate set the tone for the final two weeks of the campaign, then I expect President Obama to mock and deride his opponent all the way to the finish line and Mitt Romney to keep hammering the economy above all else.

SHOCKER: Obama Endorsed By Salt Lake Tribune: ‘Favorite Son’ Romney Can’t Be Trusted

Tribune endorsement: Too Many Mitts 

Nowhere has Mitt Romney’s pursuit of the presidency been more warmly welcomed or closely followed than here in Utah. The Republican nominee’s political and religious pedigrees, his adeptly bipartisan governorship of a Democratic state, and his head for business and the bottom line all inspire admiration and hope in our largely Mormon, Republican, business-friendly state.

But it was Romney’s singular role in rescuing Utah’s organization of the 2002 Olympics from a cesspool of scandal, and his oversight of the most successful Winter Games on record, that make him the Beehive State’s favorite adopted son. After all, Romney managed to save the state from ignominy, turning the extravaganza into a showcase for the matchless landscapes, volunteerism and efficiency that told the world what is best and most beautiful about Utah and its people.

In short, this is the Mitt Romney we knew, or thought we knew, as one of us.

Sadly, it is not the only Romney, as his campaign for the White House has made abundantly clear, first in his servile courtship of the tea party in order to win the nomination, and now as the party’s shape-shifting nominee. From his embrace of the party’s radical right wing, to subsequent portrayals of himself as a moderate champion of the middle class, Romney has raised the most frequently asked question of the campaign: "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?"

The evidence suggests no clear answer, or at least one that would survive Romney’s next speech or sound bite. Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience. Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.

More troubling, Romney has repeatedly refused to share specifics of his radical plan to simultaneously reduce the debt, get rid of Obamacare (or, as he now says, only part of it), make a voucher program of Medicare, slash taxes and spending, and thereby create millions of new jobs. To claim, as Romney does, that he would offset his tax and spending cuts (except for billions more for the military) by doing away with tax deductions and exemptions is utterly meaningless without identifying which and how many would get the ax. Absent those specifics, his promise of a balanced budget simply does not pencil out.

If this portrait of a Romney willing to say anything to get elected seems harsh, we need only revisit his branding of 47 percent of Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, yet feel victimized and entitled to government assistance. His job, he told a group of wealthy donors, "is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

Where, we ask, is the pragmatic, inclusive Romney, the Massachusetts governor who left the state with a model health care plan in place, the Romney who led Utah to Olympic glory? That Romney skedaddled and is nowhere to be found.

And what of the president Romney would replace? For four years, President Barack Obama has attempted, with varying degrees of success, to pull the nation out of its worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression, a deepening crisis he inherited the day he took office.

In the first months of his presidency, Obama acted decisively to stimulate the economy. His leadership was essential to passage of the badly needed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Though Republicans criticize the stimulus for failing to create jobs, it clearly helped stop the hemorrhaging of public sector jobs. The Utah Legislature used hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to plug holes in the state’s budget.

The president also acted wisely to bail out the auto industry, which has since come roaring back. Romney, in so many words, said the carmakers should sink if they can’t swim.

Obama’s most noteworthy achievement, passage of his signature Affordable Care Act, also proved, in its timing, his greatest blunder. The set of comprehensive health insurance reforms aimed at extending health care coverage to all Americans was signed 14 months into his term after a ferocious fight in Congress that sapped the new president’s political capital and destroyed any chance for bipartisan cooperation on the shredded economy.

Obama’s foreign policy record is perhaps his strongest suit, especially compared to Romney’s bellicose posture toward Russia and China and his inflammatory rhetoric regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Obama’s measured reliance on tough economic embargoes to bring Iran to heel, and his equally measured disengagement from the war in Afghanistan, are examples of a nuanced approach to international affairs. The glaring exception, still unfolding, was the administration’s failure to protect the lives of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, and to quickly come clean about it.

In considering which candidate to endorse, The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board had hoped that Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago. Instead, we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb. Through a pair of presidential debates, Romney’s domestic agenda remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.

Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.

courtesy , The Salt Lake Tribune.

In 1 word or 2,

How would you describe The President's debate performance tonight, and why?

My response is 'Aggressive', as in the opposite of the first debate. I also like that he brought up the 47% comment.  And, he didn't let Mitt Wrongney get away with sh*t.
My other word is 'Awake.' He didn't look sleepy. He looked alert. I was worried all day, but his performance made me smile. 
Am I alone in this?

Question of the day

I know you saw the Presidential Debate. I have a great deal of respect for Jim Lehrer, but he was completely negligent in his duties tonight. The clearest loser in tonight's debate wasn't either candidate, but Lehrer, who became Romney's little bitch within the first 15 minutes. Apparently, Jim Lehrer thinks the best moderator is no moderator at all.
Of course, considering tonight's first presidential debate was the 12th presidential or vice presidential debate Lehrer has moderated since 1988, it's likely that he knew most of his efforts to move the candidates off their talking points were going to fail. Which might be why, fairly quickly in, he seemed to give up.
He asked President Obama and Romney to stick to the questions asked. They didn't. He asked Romney, after the first statement, to ask President Obama a direct question. He didn't. He objected to Mitt Romney taking the last word on the first question. He took it anyway. He told President Obama his time was up. He took more time.
He asked them both, at the start, to stick to the limits set. And then he, and they, acted as if the limits didn't exist.

Clearly, Lehrer lost control, early and often. But just as clearly, he had a goal beyond presiding over a tightly structured debate -- which was to stay out of the way as much as possible and make the candidates run the debate themselves. And for better or worse, that goal he largely achieved.
"We're way over our first 15 minutes," Lehrer said at around the 20-minute mark, as the men continued to talk around the first question -- which was supposed to be about jobs and moved on to taxes and the budget before cycling back, sort of, to jobs. That was all right, Lehrer said, because the discussion was still about the economy. It just wasn't about that part of the economy he had asked them to discuss.
Of course, you could forgive the candidates and viewers alike for forgetting exactly what Lehrer's vague, open-ended question was from segment to segment -- which is what happens when the moderator seems to float with the tide. As a drinking game, you could count how many times one of the candidates talked over Lehrer, or how often Lehrer was reduced to sputtering "but" or "OK" or "no, no, no." Or you could just count how many times Lehrer asked Romney if he supported vouchers for Medicare before he seemed to just give up on getting an answer.
To be fair, the format put Lehrer in an almost impossible situation. If you give the candidates free rein, as he pretty much did, you end up with a debate that wanders, sometimes incomprehensibly, from surface point to surface point. If you step in too often, you risk grabbing the focus at an event that is supposed to be centered on the two candidates -- and you get slammed as biased by whichever candidate suffers under your tighter control.Still, some control might have been nice. Perhaps Lehrer can keep that in mind if a 13th debate comes his way.

How do you think it went?

A for Effort



Barack H. Obama

 “No matter how old you are now. You are never 2 young or 2 old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished & (against the odds) great things at different ages…


1) Helen Keller At the age of 19 months Helen became deaf & blind. But that didn’t stop her.She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard & violin, he composed from the age of 5.

3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes”.

4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.

5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13 years.

6) Nadia Comăneci At age 14, gymnast of Romania scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics.

7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama November 1950, at the age of 15.

8) Pele soccer superstar was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.

9) Elvis was a Superstar by age 19.

10) John Lennon was 20 years & Paul Mcartney 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in1961.

11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936 .

12) Beethoven was a Piano virtuoso by age 23.

13) Issac Newton at 24 wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

14) Roger Bannister was 25 When he broke the 4 minute mile record.

15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity.

16) Lance E Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France .

17) Michelangelo created the two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28.

18) Alexander the Great by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world.

19) J.K.Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript for Harry Potter.

20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman 2 fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind.

22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest (highest Mountain in the world.

23) Martin Luther King jr was 34 When he did the speech “I Have A Dream”.

24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated 4 Nobel Prize in Physics 1903.

25) The Wright brothers, Orville (was 32 ) & Wilbur (was 36) when they invented & built the world's first successful airplane & making the first controlled, powered & sustained heavier-than-air human flight.

26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died & virtually unknown yet his paintings today are worth millions.

27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.

28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and 49 years old for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

29) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused 2 obey bus driver’s order 2 give up her seat 2 make room for a white passenger.


30) John F. Kennedy was 43years when he became President of the United States.


31) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.


32) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote “ The Hunger Games”.


33) Barack H. Obama was 47 when he became the first black President.

34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.

35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.

36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became President.

37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote “the cat in the hat”.

40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549, in the Hudson River in, 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived.

41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise.

42) J R R Tolkien was 62 when the lord of the ring books came out.

43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the United States.

44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats.

45) Nelson Mandela was 76 When he Became Presidident.   

 In a few weeks I'll be 50.  Most of my aspirations have not been met yet, but suddenly, for the first time, I don't feel old. My grandfather used to always tell my mother  'not to let age dictate what she's supposed to be doing.'   He's right.

I will show this list to my nephew.  He's in his senior year of high school. He's a good young man and makes good grades. He's got lots of aspirations, but he's lazy. I'm glad that we've always been close and that he listens to me. Soon we'll talk about what he's most passionate about doing and  I'll try to inspire him to put more of an effort. I don't want him to just talk about it. I want him to be about it.
The same with my self. I don't want to just talk about it. I want to be about it. I need to put in more of an effort, I will admit.   And I'm not too old. 

I'm so proud

of my President.

Now to look into volunteering opportunities at the local campaign office.