He is ending the unjust war

President Obama outlined on Friday his plan to withdraw American combat forces from Iraq by August 2010, promising to dramatically scale back one of the nation's longest and costliest military efforts.
"Let me say this as plainly as I can: By Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end," Obama told U.S. Marines in a speech at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

He is left handed

He appreciates and uses technology

Want Obama wants, Obama gets. Scoring the first major victory of his nascent term, the White House announced today that President Barack Obama will indeed keep his BlackBerry (eat it, Sectera Edge). President Obama will use the BlackBerry to keep in touch with “senior staff and a small group of personal friends.” As we’ve mentioned previously, Obama’s decision will have significant effects on the transparency of his communications.
Gibbs said the presumption from the White House counsel’s office is that e-mails will be subject to the Presidential Records Act, the law that requires the National Archives to preserve presidential records. But he also said that some exemptions in the law allow for “strictly personal communications.” He did not say how that classification would be determined but made clear that the device could be used for both business and personal communication.
How did Obama get the deal done? By turning the NSA loose on his BlackBerry:
On Monday, a government agency said that the Obama administration — but that is probably the National Security Agency — added to a standard BlackBerry a super-encryption package…. and Obama WILL be able to use it … still for routine and personal messages.
http://www.blackberrycool.com/2009/01/obama-to-keep-his-blackberry-get-a-super-encryption/

He keeps to his word

President Barack Obama approved adding some 17,000 U.S. troops for the flagging war in Afghanistan, his first significant move to change the course of a conflict that his closest military advisers have warned the United States is not winning.


"This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," Obama said in a statement.

That was a slap at his predecessor, George W. Bush, whom Obama has accused of slighting urgent national security needs in Afghanistan in favor of war in Iraq.

The White House said the new commander in chief would send a Marine unit and one additional Army brigade to Afghanistan this spring and summer. About 8,000 Marines are expected to go first, followed by an Army brigade totaling about 4,000 troops, and 5,000 support forces. The United States has slightly more than 30,000 troops in the country now.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100797854

He outmaneuvers the opposition

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15rich.html?_r=2

He promotes community service

"We are one people; We are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America's story"





http://usaservice.org

He genuinely cares for people in need

He acts on the environment

On Monday morning, President Barack Obama signed executive orders that could speed the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles by improving fuel economy and setting stricter emissions standards. While the technology exists to reach the stricter standards, it's not clear that automakers can implement them fast enough. What's more, additional policy measures may be needed to reduce overall fuel consumption.
Obama signed two orders on Monday. One required the Department of Transportation (DOT) to enforce a law that will increase fuel-economy standards to a minimum of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The law was passed in 2007, but detailed rules telling automakers how to comply were never implemented by the Bush administration. The second order signed by the president calls for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to revisit a request from the state government of California asking for permission to implement emissions standards that are more strict than federal rules. Those standards call for decreasing carbon-dioxide emissions from new vehicles by 30 percent by 2016; more than a dozen other states have since followed California's example. Under President Bush, that request was denied, but experts say it's likely that the EPA will now approve it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22022/

He protects the health of children

US President Barack Obama has signed a bill to expand government-funded health insurance to cover an additional four million children. He acted just hours after the House of Representatives backed the $32.8bn (£23bn) expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Programme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7871177.stm

He calls it like it is

"And I'm happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that's what part of the election in November was all about."

"We can't posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us in into this mess in the first place"

"I can't tell you with 100% certainty that every single item in this plan will work exactly as we hoped, but what I can tell you is... that endless delay and paralysis in Washington, in the face of this crisis, will only bring deepening disaster."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7878195.stm

He controls corporate greed

US President Barack Obama has announced a $500,000 (£355,000) limit on executive pay at US firms that need substantial fresh government aid. The move follows widespread public anger over the levels of pay on Wall Street, but is not expected to be applied retrospectively. President Obama said it was "shameful" that top bankers had awarded themselves giant bonuses last year. He added that taxpayers should not be "subsidizing excessive compensation". In addition to the limit on basic pay, Mr Obama said if affected executives receive any further bonuses, they "will come in the form of stock that can't be paid up until taxpayers are paid back for their assistance".

Firms will also have to publicly disclose "all the perks and luxuries bestowed upon senior executives, and provide an explanation to taxpayers and to shareholders as to why these expenses are justified". "We're asking these firms to take responsibility, to recognize the nature of this crisis and their role in it," said the president.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7870638.stm

He values kids and their education

"We're very proud of what's been accomplished at this school and we want to make sure that we're duplicating that success all across the country," Obama told the students, who were about the same age as his youngest daughter, seven-year-old Sasha.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iGD7MGkMee1r_h4RAjxaI39WOEUw

He owns up to his mistakes

"I think I screwed up," Obama said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And, I take responsibility for it and we're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/03/obama.daschle/index.html

He understands and appreciates the value of science

STEVEN CHU
Obama taps a Nobel physicist for his Cabinet
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39261/title/Obama_selects_Steven_Chu_as_Energy_Secretary

This work by Steven is pretty cool: http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/seminars/chu/chu.pdf

He can write

"What I do know is that history returned that day with a vengeance; that, in fact, as Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried -- it isn't even past. This collective history, this past, directly touches my own. Not merely because the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with an eerie precision, some of the landscapes of my life -- the buildings and roads and faces of Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan; not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because the underlying struggle -- between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us -- is the struggle set forth, on a miniature scale, in this book. I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all."

http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-My-Father-Story-Inheritance/dp/0307383415/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product

He understands race

He cracks down on influence peddling

When President Obama was campaigning for the job, he promised to change the culture of lobbying and influence peddling in Washington. Bob Kaiser is a senior correspondent with The Washington Post and the author of the book So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government. He talks with Renee Montagne about the president's efforts to end influence peddling.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100131309

His infomercials are cooler than the shamwow guy!