Obama balloon

We had an artist day at school and a balloon artist was one of the day’s favorites.  Check out the balloon that he made in the likeness of President Obama!

Amazing, huh?

Did you know?

Did you know that the White House now has a blog?   I put it in my bloglines and I get to see a snippet of each post- to see if I want to read about it.  Today I read about the delay in changing tv to digital, the foreclosure crisis, how education should be, as the president toured a DC charter school and the expansion of health care for needy children.  I love this new aspect of the new website- information right at my fingertips, without me having to search on cnn.com.

Did you know that President Obama gives a video message to the country every week?  It’s in the section called, “Your Weekly Address.”  I also think this is great!  It’s nice to have the leaders of our country speaking right to the regular people. 

If you haven’t checked out the new website, head on over here.

Where did you watch the inauguration?

I watched from my classroom with my kids.  I brought them back early from lunch so they could see the swearing in.  After studying civil rights, Rosa Parks and MLK, the kids were so excited to have a non-white president.  They started excitedly talking about how we now need a woman president, a hispanic president, an indian president, and an asian president (all kids in our class).  I hope they truly understand how significant this historic day was- I really think they do. 

I wanted the kids to be able to watch it on my interactive whiteboard, since it’s so big, but the internet was jammed!  So, instead they had to crane their necks.  They didn’t seem to mind.

I love that one of the students is pointing at President Obama in this picture.  How cute!

The Choice Is Clear

The answer to our rising gas prices is not drilling off our Florida coast or in Anwar.  The fact is that it would barely make a dent in our oil needs, it would only give more money to Big Oil organizations. As Obama says, “We can’t afford 4 more years of our addiction to oil from dictators.”  Check out how Obama and McCain compare:

The Choice Is Clear

CHALLENGE		McCAIN
Immediate Financial Relief for Families This Summer	$300 per family in rebate checks from a second round of stimulus to help families offset the cost of $4.00 gas this summer. (Obama Second Stimulus Plan)	No credible plan for immediate financial relief. Proposed a gas tax gimmick that would provide at most 30 cents a day for the typical workers while increasing oil company profits and depriving our under-funded national highway trust fund of $10 billion. (Tax Policy Center)
Making America’s Economy Vibrant and Competitive in the Long Haul	Apollo-scale investment of $150 billion investment over 10 years to jumpstart renewable energy technology development and deployment.	No comprehensive plan for clean energy investments. Has repeatedly opposed any new investments and incentives in for renewable energy. He rejects 99.8% of the Obama ideas for investing in our energy future – the advanced battery prize represents 0.2% of the overall investment in the Obama plan.
The Next 10 Years of Oil	3 million barrels of oil savings. Plan will reduce U.S. oil consumption by about 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2018. Supports new development on existing leases, which could nearly double total U.S. oil production, and increase natural gas production by 75 percent. (Obama Energy Plan)	Not a drop more. McCain plan to open up our coastlines to drilling would not bring meaningful new production on-line for ten years. (U.S. Dept. of Energy)
Reducing Dependence on Foreign Oil	Plan to reduce oil consumption by 10 million barrels, or at least 35%, by 2030. That is enough to totally offset our imports from OPEC countries.	Says No to this goal, and has no plan to reduce our long-term dependence on oil.
Green Collar Jobs	Plan for renewables, fuel economy and energy efficiency will help create 5 million new green collar jobs.	No green jobs plan.
Ending Excessive Speculation in Oil Markets	Supports fully closing the Enron Loophole and eliminating offshore loopholes that encourage excessive speculation. Plan will ease the impact of rising prices.	No plan. Sen. Phil Gramm – one of Senator McCain’s chief economic advisors – was responsible for sneaking the Enron Loophole into law.
Fuel Economy v Offshore Drilling	Supports doubling the fuel efficiency of autos within 18 years, saving American consumers from purchasing a half trillion gallons of gas. Taking this one step will achieve more than three times the oil savings than could be produced under even the most optimist scenarios of drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Obama Energy Plan; Department of Energy)	No plan to increase fuel efficiency standards. Repeatedly opposed legislative efforts to increase CAFE standards. Now supports simply enforcing existing standards.
Energy Efficiency	Plan will reduce the energy intensity of our economy 50% by 2030, through improvements in building efficiency, smart grid, and giving utilities an incentive to invest in efficiency rather than new production.	No energy efficiency plan.
Windfall Profits Tax	Supports implementing a well-designed windfall profits tax on profits made over $80 per barrel to help families pay energy bills.	No windfall profits tax plan. Supports $4 billion per year in new tax breaks for major U.S. oil companies, including $1.2 billion per year for Exxon-Mobil – the most profitable company in the history of the world. (Center for American Progress)

I voted. Did you?

Who would you vote for right.now?

If today were the presidential election, who would you vote for? 

Here are the numbers from the Iowa caucas:

Democrats

Edwards – 29 percent
Obama — 23 percent
Clinton — 21 percent
Richardson — 10 percent
Biden — 3 percent
Kucinich — 2 percent
Gravel — 1 percent
Dodd — 0
Uncommitted –11 percent

Republicans

Romney – 30 percent
McCain – 18 percent
Guiliani – 17 percent
Thompson – 7 percent
Brownback – 5 percent
Huckabee – 4 percent
Tancredo – 4 percent
Cox – 1 percent
Gilmore – 1 percent
Hunter – 1 percent
Paul – 0
Uncommitted – 12 percent

There are some scary people in there…and some decent choices.  Me, personally?  Here’s my vote:

I would vote for Gore in a heartbeat.  He is so intelligent, charismatic and passionate…I wish he had really let his personality show through in the past.  Instead, he lost the election and immediately looked like a wildebeast!  LOL

You want to know something funny?  Yeah….he’s not even running!  He’s just my hopeful.