Go Obama!

[zooropop40]

^ On the contrary, it was Notre Dame who invited him, and the Notre Dame administration which stuck to its guns about having him speak there. Most of those protestors bused or drove in from elsewhere--Randall Terry, Alan Keyes, Norma McCorvey etc.; these people have nothing to do with Notre Dame. According to the local paper, there were only 26 actual students (out of more than 2600) boycotting the ceremony. Now if actual students and faculty who objected to Obama speaking there and/or receiving an honorary degree wished to protest, great, go for it, but this should never have become a free-for-all with random pro-life activists busing in from all over the Midwest to wave signs, push around bloody dolls in baby strollers, hire planes with pro-life banners to fly around overhead for weeks, etc. A commencement speech is NOT a political event, it is for the students. And no, Obama was not their first pro-choice commencement speaker, nor even the first pro-choice sitting President to deliver a commencement address there...let alone all the other Catholic teachings Presidents who've spoken there haven't supported: on capital punishment, Iraq War, Latin America policies, etc.

A friend of mine who's taught there for many years (and was at the ceremony yesterday) emailed me a link to the speech, which I watched most of. It seemed like a very fine speech.

hmm, well if this is true (and I hope it is) then the media sure made it out to be like the campus was divided and the students protesting was more than 26. I guess the controversy overshadowed the fact that maybe it wasnt notre dame students as much as radical right wing people.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

I like that they put the heckling - not just (inaudible heckling) or (interrupted by audience member), but what he actually said - into the official transcript.

 

[deep]

Obama sets strict limits on car exhaust emissions

Policy requires US automakers to produce cars and trucks that get an average 35.5mpg by 2016

America's gas-guzzling automobiles were heading towards extinction yesterday as Barack Obama set strict limits on car exhaust emissions and directed producers to make a more fuel-efficient vehicle fleet. The policy requires US auto makers to produce cars and trucks that achieve an average 35.5mpg by 2016, and will reduce America's carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.

"For the first time in history we have set in motion a national policy aimed at increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new trucks and cars sold in the United States," Obama told state governors, including California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, car industry executives and environmentalists in the White House rose garden.

Obama said America had paid a high price for its dependence on imported oil, and the change was long overdue. "What is all the more tragic is that we've known about these costs in one way or another since the gas shortages of the 1970s. And yet all too little has been done. Calls for action rise and fall with the price of a barrel of oil," he said.

Environmentalists said the policy, which will be put in force by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transport, would do more to reduce global warming pollution than any of the other measures taken by Obama so far. It would also lead to the overhaul of the US car industry. Cars and trucks are responsible for about a quarter of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama said the change, which will improve today's average 25mpg performance, was the equivalent of shutting down 194 coal plants or taking 58m cars off the roads for a year. It will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 900m metric tonnes, and save the equivalent of last year's imports of oil from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria combined.

This is huge.

Obama will get great credit in history for this.

This will be a big part of his legacy.

If Bush had the fortitude to do something like this,
his standing both nationally and internationally would be 10-15 points higher.

 

[Salome]

great timing

 

[HyperU2]

Well done.

Obama observes Memorial Day at Arlington cemetery - Yahoo! News

 

[bigjohn2441]

hopefully these new regulations on automobiles won't cause rises in their prices. i imagine these car companies will have to spend a decent sum of money to ensure their automobiles are compliant, and therefore rising prices. in this economic crisis i dont think we need cars to cost more. it may save me gas in the long run, but i need the extra $1000 or so the car costs now.

 

[deep]

Last week, a group of about 60 professors petitioned the White House, asking the first black U.S. president to break tradition and not memorialize military members from the Confederacy, the group of Southern states that supported slavery.

"The Arlington Confederate Monument is a denial of the wrong committed against African-Americans by slave owners, Confederates and neo-Confederates, through the monument's denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes," the petitioners said. "This implies that the humanity of Africans and African-Americans is of no significance."

The White House ignored the request.

Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, a customary presidential undertaking on Memorial Day. He also had one sent to the Confederate Memorial there, a traditional practice but not well publicized. Obama also took the unprecedented step of sending a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington's historically black U Street neighborhood.

That memorial — to the 200,000 blacks who fought for the North during the Civil War — had been mentioned as a compromise in recent days.

Presidents traditionally visit Arlington National Cemetery to personally leave a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a marble structure holding the remains of unidentified U.S. service members who died during war. Presidents then have aides deliver wreaths to other memorials or monuments, generally including the Confederate Memorial.

Hopefully, some day the U S Government will stop honoring the Confederacy.


Obama is not the right President to stop.

 

[BVS]

hopefully these new regulations on automobiles won't cause rises in their prices. i imagine these car companies will have to spend a decent sum of money to ensure their automobiles are compliant, and therefore rising prices. in this economic crisis i dont think we need cars to cost more. it may save me gas in the long run, but i need the extra $1000 or so the car costs now.

The car industry as a whole, especially American car companies are going to have to rethink everything, they've been on auto-pilot for years and real innovation has gone out the window. Cost will have to be part of this rethinking.

 

[deep]

but i need the extra $1000 or so the car costs now.

you can easily save $85 a month in gasoline costs.

How much is that in one year?

or the 4 year life of your car?

If a car cost $15,000 or $14,000

what is the differece in you monthly payment?


What is the differece in the resale of a 4 year old car that gets 20 miles per gallon vs one that gets 35 mpg?

 

[HyperU2]

I want to be able to drive whatever I want to drive. I love my gas guzzler, it pisses off hippies.

 

[zooropop40]

I want to be able to drive whatever I want to drive. I love my gas guzzler, it pisses off hippies.

No one is telling you what you can and cannot drive- that is just what people have been spewing on Fox news. by putting higher standards on cars it pressures auto makers to innovate and create a car that appeals to many americans (such as an SUV) with better mileage. We can do it- we have the technology- we just needed the motivation.

 

[anitram]

I want to be able to drive whatever I want to drive. I love my gas guzzler, it pisses off hippies.

Have you enrolled in the army yet so that you can go protect the oil for your gas guzzler over there in a-rab lands?

 

[financeguy]

Gas guzzlers are an offensive against aesthetics, apart from anything else.

Anyone who prefers to spend their hard earned on this:

instead of this:

is, prima facie, a moron.

 

[BVS]

I want to be able to drive whatever I want to drive.

Good for you, now what's the point of this post?


What if what you WANT to drive isn't invented yet? This is really a silly statement, but it's one you hear over and over coming out of conservative mouths thinking that somehow someone is telling you, you can't drive this or that...

 

[HyperU2]

Have you enrolled in the army yet so that you can go protect the oil for your gas guzzler over there in a-rab lands?

Did my time.

Gas guzzlers are an offensive against aesthetics, apart from anything else.

I kind of like the 17 MPG look.

Good for you, now what's the point of this post?


What if what you WANT to drive isn't invented yet? This is really a silly statement, but it's one you hear over and over coming out of conservative mouths thinking that somehow someone is telling you, you can't drive this or that...

What if they must stop making what I like?

 

[BVS]

What if they must stop making what I like?

Then the market didn't call for it, or they weren't bright enough to make it work...

 

[HyperU2]

I do believe there will always be a market for pickup trucks. Tough to tow a boat with a Prius.

 

[BVS]

I do believe there will always be a market for pickup trucks. Tough to tow a boat with a Prius.

Well then you have no problem then now do you?

 

[Irvine511]

I do believe there will always be a market for pickup trucks. Tough to tow a boat with a Prius.

somehow, i think you'll survive.

 

[indra]

What if they must stop making what I like?

Show some initiative, Hyper! You'll find something else or you will start (or at least invest in) a company to make what you like.

 

[Tiger Edge]

I love my gas guzzler, it pisses off hippies.

You also continue to fund the very people who are trying to steal our freedoms!!1!1!111!!!!
I've cut out Citgo from my life completely and have started carpooling anyway. I fill up around once a month, if even, and it saves me so much money a month.
However, you feel fine tossing your money away just to have a bigass truck then go for it. I hope you don't roll over. I've driven a bigass truck and I know for sure I prefer a smaller car, and that's nothing to do with the environment or gas.

 

[HyperU2]

So you hope I crash. Nice. Sorry, I know what I'm doing.

 

[martha]

I love my gas guzzler, it pisses off hippies.

And lines the pockets of Chavez, the Saudis, and the Iranian government.

All dear, close friends of conservatives.

 

[HyperU2]

So maybe we should stop them from sending oil anywhere? It's not just US.

 

[martha]

So maybe we should stop them from sending oil anywhere? It's not just US.

Whatever makes you feel better.

 

[HyperU2]

You're the one worried about them. 18% of our petroleum from the Gulf? I'm not sweating it.

 

[martha]

Who said I was worried?

 

[corianderstem]

I hope you don't roll over. I've

So you hope I crash. Nice.

Plz to brush up on your reading skillz.

 

[HyperU2]

Plz to brush up on your reading skillz.

I'll get from it what I want. She wants me dead.

 

[zooropop40]

I'll get from it what I want. She wants me dead.

usual conservative logic .... taking facts and making them "what we want"