PERTZ

http://www.earthcam.com/usa/missouri/stlouis/kiener/

THE  BILLIKEN CRAZE BEGAN 100 YEARS AGO IN 1908  THERE WAS EVEN A BILLIKEN RAG AS PERFORMED LAST YEAR IN SEDALIA BY THE 14-YEAR-OLD.




WATCH FOX 2 NEWS IN THE MORNING MONDAY FOR MORE

He has a host of relatives in exotic locations from Hawaii to Kenya, and during his run for the American presidency he discovered that he had an aunt living in Boston.

Now Barack Obama is being claimed by not one but as many as 8,000 Beduin tribesmen in northern Israel.

Although the spokesman for the lost tribe of Obama has yet to reveal the documentary evidence that he says he possesses to support his claim, people are flocking from across the region to pay their respects to the “Beduin Obama”, whose social standing has gone through the roof.

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“We knew about it years ago but we were afraid to talk about it because we didn’t want to influence the election,” Abdul Rahman Sheikh Abdullah, a 53-year-old local council member, told The Times in the small Beduin village of Bir al-Maksour in the Israeli region of Galilee. “We wrote a letter to him explaining the family connection.”

Mr Obama’s team have not responded to the letter so far but that has not dampened Sheikh Abdullah’s festivities.

He has been handing out sweets and huge dishes of baklava traditional honey-sweetened pastries to all and sundry, and plans to hold a large party next week at which he will slaughter a dozen goats to feed the village.

It was his 95-year-old mother who first spotted the connection, he says. Seeing the charismatic senator on television, she noted a striking resemblance to one of the African migrant workers who used to be employed by rich sheikhs in the fertile north of British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s.

The Africans would sometimes marry local Beduin girls and start families, though, like many migrant workers, would just as frequently return home after several years.

One of those men was a relative of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, Sheikh Abdullah maintains.

He estimates that his tribe extends to as many as 8,000 members, all of them loosely connected to the African-American senator for Illinois.

Sheikh Abdullah swears that he has papers and pictures to back up his claim but has promised his mother not to divulge them until he has presented them to Mr Obama, something he hopes will happen once his “relative” is in the White House.

“We want to send a delegation to congratulate him, and we know we’ll get an answer soon,” he grinned.

Sheikh Abdullah’s renown as the relative of the soon-to-be most powerful man on Earth has spread like wildfire among the Arab community of northern Israel, and especially among Beduins, a formerly semi-nomadic group of pastoralists corralled into townships by the modern state of Israel.

Two baby boys born into the sheikh’s large clan have even been named Obama.

“We knew he’d win,” the sheikh said, constantly interrupted by a barrage of phone calls from wellwishers and those hoping to cash in on his newfound wasta, an Arabic term denoting influence or clout. “We have always been a lucky family.

“We hope he’ll end all wars and intervene here to solve our problems in Israel. The Beduin are the people who suffer the most here,” he added while greeting a wellwisher from Ghajar, an Arab town divided between Israel and southern Lebanon, the bitter legacy of the Jewish state’s long occupation of southern Lebanon.

“We hope to God that Obama will solve the problem of Ghajar,” said Sheikh Issam al-Khalil, a leading citizen of the divided town, whose residents mostly speak Hebrew and Arabic but many of whom consider themselves as originally Syrian.

“Everyone is talking about [Sheikh Abdullah’s ties to Mr Obama] . . . They believe it. The sheikhs from all the villages are talking about it. There’s a whole delegation of Druze leaders coming from the Golan Heights to congratulate him.”

The history of the Middle East is littered with the stories of false messiahs and their brief followings. For the time being, Sheikh Abdullah is greeting a dozen respectful visitors a day, basking in the reflected glory of what would be not only the first African-American US President but the first one who could claim kinship with an entire clan of Beduins.

Obama's code name 'Renegade' WHAT WOULD PRESIDENT TIM'S NAME BE?

Published: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 4:22 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 5:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- It's official: Barack Obama is now "Renegade."

CHARLES DHARAPAK / Associated Press President-elect Barack Obama, code name "Renegade," drops daughters Malia ("Radiance"), left, and Sasha ("Rosebud") off at school Monday in Chicago.

At least for the Secret Service's code name for the president-elect.

In addition, the security names -- all alliterative -- for his wife, Michelle, are "Renaissance" and daughters Malia "Radiance" and Sasha "Rosebud."

Vice President-elect Joe Biden's code name is "Celtic."

Since the time of Harry Truman, commanders in chief and their families have been assigned security code names. Truman's was "General." Dwight Eisenhower was known as "Providence." And John F. Kennedy, perhaps suggesting a Camelot theme, was "Lancer."

The not-so-secret names are chosen by officials at the White House Communications Agency, which was not inclined to comment on the selection process. An agency spokesman once said the names are assigned by "sheer whim."

Skinny kid with funny name' who'll lead the free worldPERTZ OBSERVATION, THAT IS NOT RUSH LIMBAUGH WALKING UP BEHIND WITH A STICK....THAT VERBAL BEATING IS JUST STARTING.

Barack Obama with his grandad, Stanley Dunham, in Hawaii in the 1960s Picture:
  Published Date: 06 November 2008 By Stephen McGinty WHEN BARACK Obama announced on 10 February, 2007, that he was running for president, he did so standing in front of the Old State Capital building in Springfield, Illinois. It was a symbolic choice. For it was here that Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic speech in 1858, predicting civil war and insisting a "House Divided" could not stand. To many, the American Civil War finally came to a close on Tuesday night, when the state of Virginia, the first to break from the union in defence of their right to enslave a people on account of the colour of their skin, voted to elect a black man to the White House by judging the content of his character.

To Mr Obama, it was a childhood dream come true. As a young boy in third grade, he wrote an essay announcing his plan to be president, and he was already displaying signs of his formidable organisational skills by urging fellow pupils into straighter lines. As his teacher later explained: "He always wanted to be No 1…he wants to be in charge."

Yet first he had to gain control of himself and discover who he really was. Born on 4 August, 1961, in Hawaii, to a white mother, Ann Dunham, and a black father, Barack Obama snr, a Kenyan student at the University of Hawaii, young Barack never really knew his father, who would abandon his family two years later.

Instead, he was initially raised by his mother and her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he spent three years and was taught to box by his stepfather.

His stepfather was also to teach him a valuable lesson in life. "Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They're just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man's land," Mr Soetoro told young Barack, adding: "Which would you rather be?"

Barack later returned to live in Hawaii with his grandparents, Stanley Durham and his wife, Madelyn, whom Barack, who was known as Barry, always referred to as "Toot". He saw his father for the last time when he was 11 when Mr Obama snr returned to the island on a difficult visit during which he tried to re-exert his paternal rights by insisting his son turn off How the Grinch Stole Christmas and read a book instead. The son was glad when the father departed and would later write: "If my father hadn't exactly disappointed me, he remained something unknown, something volatile and vaguely threatening."

As a mixed-race child in a white home, the question of the colour of his skin barely entered his mind. Yet, as an exceptionally bright teenager, where exactly he fitted into society began to prey on his mind, and he started dabbling in drugs, using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine to, as he put it, "push questions of who I was out of my mind".

Stepping across educational establishments in Los Angeles and New York, his political conscience was finally ignited in Chicago, where he spend time as a community organiser charged with developing relations with black churches. After being raised in a religiously indifferent household, he also developed his spirituality, joining the Trinity United Church of Christ, whose pastor's inflammatory comments would later almost derail his presidential campaign.

His political star began to shine most brightly at Harvard Law School, which he entered in 1988. Within two years he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, which led to national press and a book deal. It also led to an offer to clerk on the Supreme Court, which he turned down, explaining that the law was not his true path, but politics.

While at law school, he worked as an associate at the legal firm Sidley & Austin, where he met his wife, Michelle, with whom he would have two daughters. It was appropriate that their first date was to go see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing, about a race riot in Brooklyn. A descendent of slaves, Michelle Robinson helped her future husband embrace his racial identity and nurtured his political ambitions, introducing him to the likes of Jesse Jackson.

Six years after his father died in a 1982 crash, Barack visited his Kenyan relations, and he would later write eloquently about his absent parent in Dreams of My Father, which was published in 1995, just a few months before his mother died of ovarian cancer.

After Harvard, Mr Obama returned to Chicago to practice civil rights law, representing victims of housing and job discrimination. He served in the Illinois state senate from 1996 to 2004.

His biggest break came when John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, invited him to speak at that year's party convention. Mr Obama electrified the audience with a speech about self reliance and high aspiration. He declared: "Through hard work and perseverance, my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before," he said. In a chorus that would become worn with repetition over the next few years, he insisted there were not "Republican" or "Democratic" states, "only the United States of America".

After a landslide US Senate election victory in Illinois a few months later, Mr Obama became a media darling and one of the most visible figures in Washington, with two best-selling books to his name.

As a senator, he established a firmly liberal voting record, but also worked with Republican colleagues on issues such as HIV/Aids-education and prevention. An early critic of the Iraq war, he spoke out against the prospect of war several months before the 2003 invasion.

He eventually clinched the 2008 Democratic nomination after a long and gruelling battle with former first lady Hillary Clinton. In the course of campaigning, Senator Obama broke all fundraising records by harnessing the internet to collect huge numbers of small donations, as well as larger sums from corporate donors.

He has demonstrated the ability to generate crowds of 100,000 or more to his rallies, and to create a buzz seldom seen in American politics.

Now comes the hard pa

---

St. Louis Firefighter, 52-year-old  Leonard  Riggins,  was off duty when he was murdered  trying to help a crash victim who turned out to be a carjacker. Riggins came upon the crash, while on his way home from work.

When Riggins approached the car he was shot once in the chest. The carjacker left Riggens dying in the street and took his vehicle which he later crashed as well.

The killer  then ran shooting back at St. Louis County Police.  They returned fire killing the killer before he could destroy more lives.

Leonard Riggins died from his chest wound at Christian NE Hospital.  Please leave your condolences if you wish.

 I Was on the air this morning when the call came in, Cody the dog is found in North St. Louis.  Cody was stolen with his Louisiana family's Chevy Suburban a week ago today from the cobblestone parking area below the Arch.       I nice fellow named Anthony found him near the Bissel Mansion site in North St. Louis last night.  Poor little Cody looked tired and hungry so Anthony brought him home and he gobbled up a whole can of Alpo.  The vets have looked at Cody and say he's ok despite some bites or cuts to his rear left leg.  His owners are coming back for Cody.  More to follow in a John Auble report later today.

 

 

 

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Joe Shoemaker, Communications Director for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, issued the following statement on the death of the Durbin’s oldest daughter.

“Christine Ann Durbin, daughter of Senator Dick Durbin and Loretta Durbin, passed away today from complications relating to a congenital heart condition.

“In addition to her parents, she is survived by her husband Marty Johnson and son Alex; brother Paul (and wife Jamie); sister Jennifer (and husband Michael).

“For sixteen years she worked in the Emerging Markets Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

“Chris Durbin, 40, fought a heroic lifelong battle with heart disease and our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Durbin family.

“Funeral arrangements are pending.”   Senator Durbin is up for re-election Tuesday

Barack Obama 'could worsen crisis': Rupert Murdoch

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Glenda Korporaal | November 01, 2008

NEWS Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has warned that Barack Obama could worsen the world financial crisis if he is elected US president next week and implements protectionist policies.

In an interview with The Weekend Australian before delivering the first of six Boyer lectures on ABC radio tomorrow afternoon, Mr Murdoch said the Democrats' policies would result in "a real setback for globalisation" if implemented.

Mr Murdoch said he did not know whether Senator Obama would implement all of the protectionist measures espoused by the party.

"Presidents don't often behave exactly as the campaign might have suggested because they become prisoners of all sort of things - mainly circumstances and events," Mr Murdoch said.

He warned that any rise in protectionism in the US, including introducing trade measures against China as espoused by some Democratic members in Congress, would risk retaliation and could threaten the world trading and financial systems.

"For the past three or four years, some Democrats have been threatening to do things like put on extra tariffs (against Chinese imports) if they don't change their currency,' Mr Murdoch said. "If it happened, it could set off retaliatory action which would certainly damage the world economy seriously."

Mr Murdoch said Kevin Rudd had been "very sure-footed" in his handling of the financial crisis and defended the Prime Minister against criticism that he acted too quickly in his blanket guarantee of the deposits of the Australian banking system.

But the chairman of News Corporation, which owns The Weekend Australian, warned that politicians should be careful not to make the situation worse by "alarming people more than they should be alarmed, regardless of party".

"You've got to recognise when he (Rudd) did it, he did it the day after the biggest ever fall in the stock market and the US Congress's first refusal of the $700million bailout," Mr Murdoch said. "I think, relatively, over this whole financial period, he has acted very sure-footedly."

He said politicians should be careful that their comments did not further exacerbate the delicate financial situation.

Asked if the comments were meant to refer to Malcolm Turnbull, he said: "I don't think Mr Turnbull has done that."

With the US election five days away, Mr Murdoch criticised Senator Obama's tax policies as "crazy", particularly his plan to hand out tax rebates to most Americans and to increase taxes for people earning more than $250,000. He said Senator Obama's promises to give tax rebates to 95per cent of Americans was "rubbish".

"Forty per cent (of the US population) don't pay taxes, so how can he give them a tax cut?" he said. "But you can give them a welfare cheque which he has promised - a grant of $500 - which will disappear very fast. It's not going to turn the economy around at all."

Mr Murdoch said no one knew what would happen under an Obama administration "but his declared policy would see a real setback of globalisation".

Mr Murdoch said politicians should take heed of the lessons of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the US in 1930, which raised tariffs on American goods to record levels and provoked protectionist retaliation by US trading partners, slashing world trade levels and sending the world economy into depression.

Mr Murdoch said Senator Obama would make the situation worse if he implemented the policies he had promised the American union movement, which represented only 12 per cent of the US workforce, most of them government workers.

"We have the historical precedent of Smoot-Hawley," he said.

"I can't imagine he would do anything as crazy as that. But anything in that direction could add to all sorts of tensions in the world financial system and the world trading system and eventually all the way down to employment. I am not saying all these things are going to happen, but we are living in a dangerous period."

He said the whole world should "fight like hell" for freer trade and the success of the Doha Round of trade talks.

Mr Murdoch rejected suggestions that Tuesday's US election could act as a circuit breaker for the current crisis of confidence in world financial markets.

"To some extent it is beyond the power of politicians," he said. "You are going to find that the politicians are very limited in what they can do: they can make it worse but they can't stop it."

Mr Murdoch said there was a slight easing of the liquidity crisis, as market interest rates had edged down in recent weeks. But he said the financial crisis would inevitably affect economies for some time. Mr Murdoch said a push for freer trade around the world, including the success of the Doha Round, could help the world economies come out of the recession faster.

"But if it (world trade) goes the way that a lot of politicians are talking in a lot of countries, you are really going to slow down trade and business in every way," he added.

Mr Murdoch, who arrived in Australia this week, will record the first Boyer lecture tomorrow in front of a live audience at the Sydney Opera House.

The series of lectures is entitled A Golden Age of Freedom and includes Mr Murdoch's views on the rise of the new global middle class, his concerns about the raising of education levels in Australia and the importance of being ahead of the curve in using new technologies.

The third lecture is a detailed exposition of Mr Murdoch's views on the future of newspapers. Mr Murdoch has been scathing of journalists in the US, whom he argues have been all too eager to predict the demise of their own industry.

He told The Weekend Australian that newspapers would survive, although they might have to live with lower profit margins because of competition from the internet. He predicted that newspapers should see the internet as an opportunity to reach more readers in a world where people were increasingly hungry for more information.

When the Fox Philadelphia News Director moved to St. Louis two years ago, St. Louis Wins the World Series.  Then He moves to Philadelphia and the good luck continues.

The Chicago Cubs are very interested in this guy........Could talks with Rupert Murdoch be in the works?

From The Times October 30, 2008Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango  

(Tom Pilston/The Times)

Barack Obama's Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, walks from her home at a housing project in Boston

Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

A second relative believed to be the long-lost “Uncle Omar” described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a “sawed-off rifle” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.

The US press has repeatedly rehearsed Mr Obama’s extraordinary odyssey, but the other side of the family’s American experience has only been revealed in parts. Just across town from where Mr Obama made history as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, some of his closest blood relatives have confronted the harshness of immigrant life in America.

In his book Mr Obama writes that “Uncle Omar” had gone missing after moving to Boston in the 1960s – a quarter-century before Mr Obama first visited his family in Kenya. Aunt Zeituni is now also living in Boston, and recently made a $260 campaign contribution to her nephew's presidential bid from a work address in the city.

Speaking outside her home in Flaherty Way, South Boston, on Tuesday, Ms Onyango, 56, confirmed she was the “Auntie Zeituni” in Mr Obama’s memoir. She declined to answer most other questions about her relationship with the presidential contender until after the November 4 election. “I can’t talk about it, I just pray for him, that’s all,” she said, adding: “After the 4th, I can talk to anyone.”

A photograph of Ms Onyango was later shown to George Hussein Onyango, Barack Obama’s half-brother in Nairobi, who confirmed that it was their aunt. George Onyango, 26, the youngest child of Barack Obama Sr, said that he had spent weekends with his Aunt Zeituni when he was growing up, and instantly recognised her.

George Onyango said that his aunt had left for the US about eight years ago but sent him e-mails. “She left to find work and I suppose she thought her life would be better there,” he said. “She was kind and caring.”

In his memoir Mr Obama describes the joy of meeting his father’s family during his first visit to Kenya in 1988. Aunt Zeituni, then a computer programmer at Kenya Breweries in Nairobi, is portrayed as a feisty woman who proclaims herself “the champion dancer”. Uncle Omar, by contrast, remains a mysterious figure who left for America and never came back. At one point in the book a half-sister tells Mr Obama that people “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston” move to the West.

“They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again.”

Aunt Zeituni and Uncle Omar are the children of Mr Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, by his third wife – the woman Mr Obama calls “Granny” because she raised his father. Mr Obama’s father, Barack Sr, was Onyango Obama’s son by his second wife, Akumu. That makes Zeituni and Omar a half-sister and half-brother of Mr Obama’s father, or Mr Obama’s half-aunt and half-uncle.

While Mr Obama was on his voyage of personal discovery in Africa, his aunt and uncle were engaged in their own journey in his homeland.

The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen. Records at the Boston City Hall confirmed Zeituni Onyango’s birthdate as May 29, 1952.

It is not clear when Ms Onyango first came to the US. She said: “I have been coming to America ever since 1975. I always come and go.”

She is a frail woman who walks with the aid of a metal stick. Neighbours said that she lived alone in a ground-floor flat normally set aside for people facing physical hardship.

An Associated Press story about poor people buying lottery tickets at cheque-cashing shops, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 25, 2003, quotes a Zeituni Onyango whom it describes as out of work and without much money. “It's like when I feel luck might fall I do that, like manna might come from Heaven. That’s when I buy it,” she told AP.

A staff member at the Boston Housing Authority office, 50 yards from her house, said Ms Onynango had been a volunteer resident health advocate between December 2007 and August this year. She worked six hours a week for a small stipend. Records show she used the housing authority’s address to make her campaign contribution.

Ms Onyango is also listed on the internet as a volunteer with Experience Corps, a programme in which adults over 55 mentor children in their communities. The “former computer systems co-ordinator” tells the group’s online newsletter: “I felt that I should help the children in my community. I love people and enjoy interacting with them . . . Also, I was idle, and this was a chance to get involved.”

A public record search lists an “O. Onyango Obama”, born on June 3, 1944, at 24 Colgate Road whose name matches that of the “Uncle Omar” in Dreams from My Father.

Nelson Ochieng, a cousin of Mr Obama who lives in the Kenyan city of Kisumu, near the family village of Kogelo, said that Omar had changed his first name after moving to the US. “Before he went to America we all knew him as Omar, but he dropped that bit, changing it to Obama Onyango, because he said he preferred his African name,” he said. Gail Greenberger, the landlady who bought the four-storey brick block of flats at a foreclosure sale in 1994, knew her tenant, however, by the name Obama Onyango. “We used to call him ‘Oh-bummer!’. That is how I pronounced Obama in 2000,” she said.

Ms Greenberger said she inherited him with the building but was forced to evict him in 2000 for nonpayment of his rent of about $500 a month. “I remember him being decent but I think he lost his job. When they lose their job, they just stop paying rent. He did not even go to court. He bolted from the apartment,” she said. Records of Boston Housing Court show a “summary process” was executed against Mr Onyango on February 23, 2000, for unpaid rent of $2,324.70.

Mr Onyango was a business partner in a “convenience store” called the Wells Market at 1760 Dorchester Avenue, now a Hispanic bodega, or grocery. Records list him as the treasurer of the corporation, which was set up without his name in 1992 and involuntarily wound up in 2007 after failing to file annual reports since 1997.

In 1994 Obama Onyango was attacked in an armed robbery at the Wells Market, the Boston Herald reported. According to a police report, two masked black males entered the store around 9.30pm on June 7, 1994, and “did assault and beat the victim, and did rob victim of an undetermined amount of US currency. Suspects were believed to be armed with a ‘sawed-off’ rifle, and did flee the area on foot .”

Asked why the man believed to be “Uncle Omar” went by the name Obama Onyango, Zeituni Onyango said that Obama was his true name. “That is the name his father gave him,” she said. Dershaye Geresu, the Ethiopian-born president of Wells Market Inc, confirmed that Mr Onyango was a “cousin” of Mr Obama.

Lennard Tenende, whose wife Lucy was secretary to the shop, said: “I don’t know where he is. It seems as if he is getting a lot of inquiries, a lot of people trying to find him and find out about his relationship with Obama and he just doesn’t want to be found.” Mr Ochieng said that he believed Mr Onyango ran a chain of stores.

The Obama campaign was repeatedly approached for comment yesterday but had not responded at the time of going to press. It is not clear whether Mr Obama has been in touch with his African relatives living in the US, or even whether he is aware that they are on US soil.

In the preface to the 2004 reissue, he writes: “Most of the characters in this book remain a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees – a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate.”

“What is family?” he reflects. “Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me?” Twenty years after he first met Aunt Zeituni, and first heard of the elusive Uncle Omar, the man likely to be the next president will have the opportunity for another family reunion, rather closer to home.

MAKE SURE BARRY DOESN'T GET LOST

How Barack Obama tells of his first meeting with his aunt

‘‘Barack!” I turned to see Auma [his Kenyan cousin] jumping up and down behind another guard who wasn’t letting her pass into the luggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, as we laughed and hugged as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said: “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.”

“Welcome home,” Zeituni said kissing me on both cheeks . . .

We went to drop Zeituni off at Kenya Breweries, a large, drab complex where she worked as a computer programmer. Stepping out of the car, she leaned over again to kiss me on the cheek, then wagged her finger at Auma. “You take good care of Barry now,” she said. “Make sure he doesn’t get lost again.”

Once we were back on the highway, I asked Auma what Zeituni had meant about my getting lost. Auma shrugged.

“It’s a common expression,” she said. “Usually it means that the person hasn’t seen you in a while. ‘You’ve been lost,’ they’ll say. Or, ‘Don’t get lost’. Sometimes it has a more serious meaning. Let’s say a husband or son moves to the city, or to the West, like our Uncle Omar in Boston. They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just once a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again. They’ve been lost, you see. Even if people know where they are.”

Extracted from Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, pp305-307 (Canongate)

Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

 

Hold on .......















And have a nice day.

This is the North Vietnamese film taken of John McCain when he was a Prisoner of War.
It was released today to the Media.

This brings back memories for me since I had a brother over there and we live that nasty war everyday while life continued on the streets of America.

Colin Powell splits with son over White House race By Alexander Bolton  

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, has put him at odds with his own son, former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell.

Michael Powell, who served as a policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, is a surrogate for John McCain and represents the GOP nominee on the campaign trail.

  He endorsed McCain early in the Republican primary in January, and said the Arizona senator was the best candidate to “calm the turbulent economic waters and to steer the new economy in a direction that will bring growth, opportunity and prosperity to all Americans.”

Powell contributed $1,000 to McCain the day of the Iowa caucuses and another $1,000 before the Florida primary. In August, he defended McCain, who had said he rarely uses the Internet, as someone who “understands technology very well” from his time as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology.

Powell was not available Monday for comment.

His father, Colin Powell, has long been a friend of McCain’s, and in endorsing Obama, the senior Powell broke with the Republican establishment.

Colin Powell supported McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, and McCain promised then to name Powell as secretary of State, a position Powell would later hold under President Bush.

But Powell said he was impressed by Obama’s steadiness, intellectual curiosity and depth of knowledge. He called McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, unready to become president in case of emergency.

Liberal and conservative commentators alike declared the former secretary of State’s endorsement a major boost for Sen. Obama (D-Ill.).

The younger Powell, however, who still has much of his career in front of him, has lined up solidly behind McCain. If McCain becomes president he could appoint Powell to several administration positions.

Michael Powell served as chairman of the FCC under Bush from 2001 to 2005. During his tenure he advocated for bigger fines to punish obscenity and indecent content.

 Most famously, the FCC under Powell fined Viacom, the owner of CBS, $550,000 for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl.
 

He has addressed the media as a technology adviser to McCain’s campaign, and told National Public Radio in August that McCain has the experience to help create the economic and social conditions for tech businesses to thrive.

Michael Powell serves as senior adviser of Providence Equity Partners and rector of the board of visitors of the College of William and Mary. He also serves on the boards of Cisco Systems, ObjectVideo and the Rand Corporation.

He served under Cheney during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration, when Cheney held the position of Defense secretary.

Colin Powell served as chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan.

Racist?



Racist?