NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2012.

“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” Time Editor Rick Stengel told NBC’s “Today” show, where he announced the selection on Wednesday.

The short list for the honor included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head for advocating for girls’ education, as well as Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati.

Obama also received the honor in 2008, when he was President-elect.

In an interview with Time, Obama said his re-election “may have been more satisfying a win than 2008.”

“We’ve gone through a very difficult time,” Obama told the magazine. “The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this president we elected is imperfect, and yet, despite all that, this is who we want to be. That’s a good thing.”

Last year, Time honored “The Protester,” citing dissent across the Middle East that spread to Europe and the United States, saying the protesters reshaped global politics.

Time’s “Person of the Year” is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the past year for good or for ill. In 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg received the honor.

Other previous winners have included Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Bono and President George W. Bush.

Because this is Jon Stewart, it is of course high comedy. Unless you chose to watch the election results come in with the toxic waste dump of a news network Fox News, you may not have seen Karl Rove’s meltdown, and Megan Kelly’s pathetic attempt to convince Fox News’ OWN electoral vote watchers that what they had just seen was not what they had just seen. Enjoy, and you’re welcomed.

(Source: LA Times)

Monday’s presidential debate, the third and last between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney, featured a forceful and articulate defense of Obama’s foreign policy. That was no surprise. What was surprising was that it came from Romney.

That seemed to annoy the president — who was prepared to rebut his opponent’s previous, more bellicose pronouncements. But the ever-shifting Republican nominee tacked even closer to the moderate middle than he did in the debate devoted to economic policy.

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NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—With the first Presidential debate just two days away, G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney has been working intensively on two skills that have eluded him throughout the campaign: talking and thinking.

According to one aide, much of Mr. Romney’s debate preparation has involved rehearsing a slew of prepackaged “zingers,” with mixed results: “We gave him what we thought was a foolproof line about the budget deficit and he somehow turned it into a crack about gay Mexicans.”

Reportedly, Mr. Romney’s practice debates have gone worse than expected, with the former Massachusetts governor getting trounced by a variety of opponents, including the Apple personal assistant Siri.

At a joint campaign appearance in Ohio today, Ann Romney attempted to lower expectations for her husband’s performance at this Wednesday’s debate: “When Mitt starts working his mouth and goes off on some weird tangent about who knows what, please just tune him out. God knows that’s how I’ve survived all these years.”

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By Patricia Wilson-Smith

I love it when I get responses to anything that’s posted on this website; it gives us an opportunity as an organization to share our views, sometimes through debate and discussion. That happened this morning, and I’d like to share it with you.

“BarbBF’, left a comment on a recent post regarding “President Obama’s 50 Greatest Accomplishments”, which in my opinion is a model example of the kind of thinking that will endanger his re-election if we allow it to go on. This is what BarbBF had to say:

BARBBF says:
June 9, 2012 at 8:58 am (Edit)

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011,n October 20, 2011.(SNIP)No American lives were lost.

Yes..we should all rejoice that Obama supported NATO’s illegal invasion of Libya w/US taxpayer’s $$$$. All Blacks should be happy that a reported 30,000 Black Libyans are among the dead of the 50,000 Libya women, men and children incinerated by the predatory drones supplied to NATO by the US. We should be delighted that the “ethnic cleansing” of Black Libyans is still continuing. I am personally happy that of all the members the Congressional Black Caucus, only Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. has spoken out against this massacre of these thousands of civilians, and BlackWomenForObama are proud of Obama’s accomplishments in Libya.

BWFO says:

Thanks for your passionate comment. I’m sure you know that the problem of ethnic cleansing in Libya pre-dates even the civil war that eventually culminated in the events of last year. I too am happy that Jesse Jackson Jr. is pushing for an inquiry into the problem, but it’s two separate questions.

I’m sure you also know that President Obama did not make the decision to go into Libya – the UN Security Council did. He had to decide whether or not to commit American lives to the cause, or use means that would deliver the same end. Faced with that decision, I would expect any President, black, white or magenta to choose protecting American lives whenever possible, which is the crux of what’s stated in the accomplishment.

None of this diminishes the fact that lives were lost in the drone strikes; I can’t and won’t debate you on the merits of escalated attacks to end ongoing bloodshed, because it’s all tragic. But it’s incorrect for you to lay the blame for that bloodshed at the feet of President Obama, especially considering that he had to make the decision in the context of two long-running wars and a military that is already over-taxed because of decisions made by his predecessors. THEY are the ones we should be fighting; if Progressives continue to splinter and pick apart every decision the President has made, we’re going to end up with an administration that in the name of stabilizing oil prices, would have sent in every soldier available, and kept us there for years just because of their lust for war. I choose the President’s approach.

Thanks for your comment.

What are your thoughts? Can President Obama be blamed for the level of bloodshed and his handling of Libya? If you ask me, if left to a GOP President, we’d have gone in without a resolution as soon as oil hit $120 a barrel, and we’d still be there. Weigh-in.

(Source: EEW Magazine)

President Barack Obama is flashing a bright smile on the July 2012 cover of Essence Magazine where he discusses his goals for the presidency as his reelection campaign is in full swing. The publication, which reaches millions of black women, represents a core constituency for the president. Will he win the black female vote again?

After President Obama recently came out in support of gay marriage, being named by Newsweek America’s “First Gay President,” he isolated many women of color, a largely religious base.

But Obama needs black women voters.

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By Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

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By Patricia Wilson-Smith

By now, unless your address is 1234 Under A Rock Way, you know that America is in an epic moral battle over the rights of the lesbian and gay among us to wed, and that the current head resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue recently declared his support of those rights in an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts.

The reaction to his declaration was swift, and uncharacteristically dramatic, especially among African American bible-brandishing, church-going believers. Even my closest relatives, once staunch Obama supporters, have threatened to turn their backs on him this next election cycle.

Their reaction has quite frankly…terrified me.

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(Source: Huffingtonpost.com)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has a new campaign slogan: “Forward.”

Obama’s re-election team unveiled its new motto in a video released Monday morning. The seven-minute video begins by recalling the grim state of the nation’s economy when Obama took office, then ticks through what the campaign says are the president’s accomplishments, both on the economy and other issues.

The campaign also uses the video to target congressional Republicans, saying Obama had to overcome GOP obstruction on Capitol Hill in order to pass legislation.

The video tries to make the case for Obama’s re-election by saying there is still more work to do going forward.

The campaign says the video will be played for supporters attending the president’s first re-election rallies Saturday in Ohio and Virginia.

Pass through security into the headquarters of Obama 2012, and the effect is like stepping into the world’s most high-tech dorm room. Spanning the entire floor of a Chicago skyscraper, the campaign’s nerve center boasts a ping-pong table, a staff of 300 and a life-size cardboard cutout of the president dressed in a University of Montana jersey. They don’t use phones up here; most of the digital team weren’t even issued any. Instead, campaign workers communicate mostly by e-mail, G-chat and Twitter. Rows of young staffers, some perched on yoga balls, are quietly coding new online tools to engage supporters, tweaking a video of Sarah Palin attacking Obama, and tracking metrics of volunteers recruited and new voters registered. An energetic hum fills the room, punctuated only by mouse clicks.
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