wilson96   Economy, Politics, and More…

(Austin, TX) November 24, 2008 — In an attempt to conquer the mounting fears of depression and deflation, President-elect Barack Obama’s Saturday radio address touted a stimulus plan far grander than what had been advertised during his campaign – 2.5 million new jobs over the next two years with a price tag between $500 and $700 billion. While Obama campaigned on relief for small businesses, it might be awhile before we see those proposals come to fruition.

Obama further restored investor confidence with his announcement of New York Federal Reserve President, Tim Geithner, 47, as Treasury secretary. Obama holds that Geithner offers “an unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis, in all of its depth, complexity and urgency.” Much of today’s deflation anxiety stems from observance of the widespread banking crisis which hit Japan during the 1990s. Tim Geithner was “Treasury attaché in the Tokyo embassy for the first half of that decade” (Bill Powell, Time Magazine). Although officially released Monday, word that Obama was likely to choose Geithner sent stocks soaring at the end of last week.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve seen salaries struggle to keep up with inflation and therefore Americans have been borrowing more and more money. Core inflation, a measure of inflation excluding items that face volatile price movements (like food and energy), is now negative which has increased the average American’s buying power. This obviously helps workers even if it hurts companies. However, when consumer prices fall, spending collapses. As seen in the Great Depression when “supply swamped demand, driving prices down,” lower prices also raise the threat of deflation (Dallas Morning News). The U.S. Labor Department reported that consumer prices fell 1 percent in October from the previous month, the biggest fall since 1947, and while the consensus is that deflation is a remote possibility, it should still be taken very seriously. In a recent interview, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said “the nation is on the brink of the same kind of deflationary spiral that pushed down prices, closed businesses and obliterated jobs during the Great Depression” (Lori Montgomery, Washington Post)

What would deflation mean for the country?

1.    As prices fell and old debts stayed fixed, companies would have a harder time repaying those debts and bankruptcies and unemployment would more than likely increase.2.    Deferred spending would further slow the economy. If people feel they can count on prices dropping, they wait until the next month, or the next month, etc. to make a purchase and while they wait, the economy spirals downward.

Richard Berner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, writes, “The ultimate bastion of defense against deflation is a Fed committed to avoid it at all costs” (Bill Powell, Time Magazine). What might the Fed do? According to Reuters’ Alister Bull, “some economists believe the Fed will cut [interest] rates to zero over the next three months.” Obama and his economic team plan to hit the ground running, hoping to pass a strengthened stimulus plan as soon as the President-elect enters office on January 20th.

For the small business owner, however, relief may not come as quickly. Matthew Bandyk (U.S. News) argues that “while many industries from life insurance to the automotive companies have been asking for a piece of the bailout money, it is harder for small businesses to get Washington’s ear. Large businesses make the argument that the economy can’t afford for them to go bankrupt.” The financial crisis and another stimulus package now top the already substantial list of topics likely to eclipse small business issues.

The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, led by Sen. John Kerry, has urged current Treasury secretary Henry Paulson to “use a portion of the rescue package to purchase government-backed small business loans through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)” which would “provide immediate relief to small businesses shut out of the credit market because of a paralyzed system” (Market Watch). In October, on the other side of the election, Obama proposed a “small business rescue plan” or tax incentives and loans. CNNMoney.com’s Stacy Cowley and Emily Maltby reported the following:

Obama’s new plan calls for the SBA’s loan guarantee programs to temporarily eliminate the fees they charge lenders, and for the agency to increase the guarantees it offers to banks that lend to qualifying small companies. Additionally, he wants the SBA to expand its facility for directly lending money to small companies through its Disaster Loan Program.

While the Disaster Loan Program is designed to aid businesses affected by natural disasters, it “does occasionally offer loans to help with nontraditional disasters” (CNNMoney.com). “There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said Saturday with the kind of honesty the American people will need to suffer the storm. The question is how many small businesses will go under while waiting for the change Obama’s promised?

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Obama to meet ASEAN leaders in New York
President Barack Obama will meet Southeast Asian leaders this month in New York, the White House said Friday, as the United States tries to bolster its role in a region faced with a rising China.

Read more on AFP via Yahoo! Philippines News

As I was switching channels today, I happened to see a report being presented on a news channel, “ASIA 2025″. Curious to know what it was, I got myself hitting the internet, biggest source of knowledge today, (though not everything is authenticated, but at least we get an idea). After a brief search of ASIA 2025, I got an eye catching statement in the search engine – “American influence will fade by 2025: NIC report”. I couldn’t resist myself and started with the article.

NIC – National Intelligence Council, is an independent US Government body and reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Not surprising to say that a body from US predicting that US is not to be a major player in economy, and military power of US will decline. A reference quote from the report “….has forecasted that the political, economic and military influence of America will substantially decline over the next two decades”. So what waits Mr. Barack Obama in office, struggle to keep afloat the US economy, its military power against other countries as a priority. Also mentioned in the report is that, this report labeled “Global Trends 2025″ will be tabled in white house by the time Mr. Obama will be in office on Jan 20. This shows that the US has felt a sense of threat and are worried internally about their economy. No doubt that they are already struggling with current economic crisis, just imagine what this report might be for Mr. Obama.  After reading this article, the first thing that comes to my mind is, how far is Mr. Obama’s “YES WE CAN” be reachable? Poor Mr. Obama, his predecessor has already done the damage by investing huge amount in wars and left nothing for his own country except the credit crunch.

Is Mr. Obama is a worried man internally, yes definitely, for Mr. Obama, the President’s seat will be a hot seat which has numerous issues attached to it. To add to the worries, he has Israel to deal with and the crisis in the middle east, not many will be silent form the middle east once he assumes the office and on the other hand the PAK crisis of terrorist, well Mr. President, a very hectic schedule awaiting for you ahead.

Also according to the report, it is stated that India and China will at the top of the super powers list by 2025. Well, has this led the worry of US? I would say YES, to some extent because the way we are seeing the US pressurizing PAK for its role in the Mumbai terror attack, such high amount of pressure was not seen before, wonder why? Once a faithful ally of PAK, US is now shifting its focus to India. One such instance can be seen when US lobbied hard for the nuclear deal in India’s favor. Did US get a feeling that India will be its prominent ally in future? A clear case of getting itself prepared for the future.

As a person, I feel that Mr. Obama is much intelligent than his predecessor, at least that is what I came to know from his election campaigns. So will he take a quick decision on Iraq war and withdraw troops or continue with his troops in the desert and drown more into credit crunch, or will he take a U-turn against Israel and condemn its attacks on Gaza and make middle east feel that he is their man? Well, to me Mr. Obama is a mystery man until he assumes office and gets his work going.

 

Regards,

 

Sabahuddin Ahmed

True to form, just like I called it, even before the New Year could began in earnest three more Black men were lynched in America. Somehow, just saying I told you so doesn’t really do it for me. On New Year’s Eve, Johannes Mehserle a White police officer shot Oscar Grant Jr. a 22 year old Black man in his back, killing him instantly as he lay prone and unarmed on a train platform in Oakland California. The incident was caught on tape. It became just the latest public lynching of a Black man in the United States, and it sparked several days of angry rebellion.1 On that very same day, in Bellaire Texas a police officer shot the 23 year old son of Bobby Tolan, a once famous professional baseball player. Robbie Tolan ended up with a bullet lodged in his liver, only because as he stood in the driveway of his own home, a White police officer simply assumed that the car he actually owned was a stolen vehicle.2 Then, hours later on New Year’s Day, nine police officers in New Orleans discharged their weapons 48 times and put 12 bullets into the back of yet another young unarmed African American man; 22-year-old Adolph Grimes was shot dead in a hail of gunfire just a few feet away from his grandmother’s home. A total of 14 bullets pierced violently through his body.3 As we established in Part One http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1259196/racist_atrocites_soar_as_

america_regurgitates.html?cat=9 of what has now regrettably become a two-part series, nobody has ever mandated that it requires a rope and a tree to lynch someone. All that it requires is the will and the means to take someone’s life. Now, with the election of the first Black man to the highest office in the land, it appears as if some White people across the country have simply lost their minds.

Truth be told, not a year has actually gone by in recent memory without at least one Black man being summarily lynched in the United States. This type of racist violence has never really ceased to exist in this country. Today of course, in America nobody except for me that is, actually has the nerve to call this lynching anymore. But that’s just what it is. And I suspect that the name has been changed in order to ‘project’ guilt upon the innocent victim. That much is clear. Again, I’m just not buying it. We are living in the 21st Century people, and damnit, something has got to give! We as a nation are better than this!

Nevertheless, all of a sudden with the election of Barack Obama it appears that the stakes for many people have simply grown much higher. We should all be mindful however, that we are being watched by Our Ancestors, and the future has its cynical eye upon us as well. Of this, I am quite sure. The election of a Black man to the most powerful office in the entire world has provided the ultimate humanization of Africans in America for the very first time during their long five-hundred-year sojourn here in the Western World. No longer can bigots White and Black simply mask their wayward beliefs behind the illusionary ritual perception of Black racial inferiority. As a consequence of Barack Obama’s election, this must now come to an end. In a sense, this ultimately is what Obama’s meaning is to all people of color. On November 4, 2008 in one fell swoop, Black people were undeniably humanized in America, and the central pillar of the racial argument has finally been dismantled forever. What this means nonetheless, is that the vocabulary of race shall have to change as well. The world as it truly exists can now hopefully be brought into sharper focus.

The Black community today remains the only place in American life where a kind of extra-legal violence is permitted similar to that which is often associated with the most brutal dictatorships around the world. These are the only neighborhoods in the country where White police officers routinely shoot to kill unarmed citizens, often with no other real excuse than the mere fact that they dared to exist in the world. There is no other community within the United States where you can find an innocent 92 year-old grandmother who is literally gunned down in her own home; for absolutely no plausible reason at all. It is the only place where the press would dare attempt to justify this atrocity by trying to turn this woman into some kind of gun-toting grandmother; simply in order to distract us from what was really going on.4 There is no other community in America where an entire elite class of Talented Tenth have summarily condemned and then completely abandoned the neighborhoods. This is the true reality whereby each day amidst economic blight and Para-military occupation, millions live their lives in the United States. Everyday, the scene is played out over and over again where foreign nationals in the ‘Hood’ run the legal-store trade safety indoors, while young unemployed Black males learn to survive in their own neighborhoods running an illicit trade outside. It must be a strange feeling being an outsider in your own neighborhood; simply because the entire world seems to believe that your community is this nation’s political dumping grounds. Death for these lost boys comes easy. Obama’s election signals a necessary change in the scope of our view towards racism and class bigotry out of the narrow confines of Civil Rights and towards a broader Human Right perspective.

What we have learned is that over 200 death threats were actually reported against the life of the new President, and just within the early hours and days directly following his election racist atrocities spiked dramatically all over the country.5 The rising rash of racist death threats continued to grow even until Inauguration Day. Moments later, Rush Limbaugh promptly told the millions who listen to his show, that he “hope[d] that the Obama Administration failed!” Now you tell me, just how patriotic was that? 6  Limbaugh’s comment alone could only serve to provide aid and comfort to untold legions bent upon the psychopathology of racial hatred. Perhaps though, questions of this nature are really best left for each of you to judge amongst yourselves.

In the weeks leading up to the Inauguration, famed neo-Nazi radio commentator Hal Turner ratcheted up the hate speech and even went so far as to suggest on his Blog, that an unmanned aerial drone should be sent to drop explosives over the crowds gathering in DC. This kind of mass murder, killing that many people he said would simply be “a public service” To kill millions of African Americans whom he called “sub-human simians” and “mentally-ill Whites” at the Inaugural Celebration was simply prudent in his view.7 Shamefully enough, Turner is certainly not alone. In just the last three months these homegrown terrorists have begun directing their bloodlust for Black life upon a number of unsuspecting innocent citizens. Hours after the November 4 election, three men Michael F. Jacques (24), Thomas A. Gleason Jr. (21), and Benjamin F. Haskell (22) claimed that it was simply anger over the election of a Black man to the Presidency of the United States that actually motivated them to pour gallons of gasoline on the predominantly Black Macedonia Church of God in Springfield Massachusetts; and then set it ablaze. A total of five firemen were subsequently injured fighting the flames.8 Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr. who Pastors Macedonia Church of God called the actions of these three young men “irrational”:

“This practice of racism undermines the full potential of our country! It wants to deny the contributions of the best of all our people!” 9

So true! After the arrest of the three men Reverend Georgeanne Greene, another prominent member of the clergy in Springfield, said that ultimately this incident helps us to bring bigotry out into the open and “allow[s] us to face head-on the level of racism in our country”.10 However, maybe I am mistaken but I for one have not seen CNN, Fox News, or even MSNBC acting to put this scourge of racist bloodlust into the spotlight; or for that matter does there appear to be any effort at all to explore the true nature of what is actually going on. This of course is because racism in America is treated like some deformed child that we all have kept hidden in the basement. Of course we all know that it is there, but we really are not supposed to talk about it! It is meant to be regulated to some shameful somewhat fabled past that must now remain unspoken. Otherwise, you just might be accused of playing the race card! To be completely honest with you, to this very day I simply have no idea just what this bizarre phrase is actually supposed to mean. What I do know, is that innocent Black people keep dying.

Another thing that we have discovered is that since being assigned Secret Service protection in the spring of 2007, which was much earlier than any other candidate in history, President Obama has received more death threats than all the other 43 presidents combined. It seems that there are a terribly large amount of people in this country who are seething with a potentially violent psychopathology, simply unable to get over the mere fact that the 44th President of the United States could have actually been owned by the first 27. This alone seems to be enough to actually elicit their utmost anguish and distain. Some have even spoken about states once again seceding from the nation. Yet, we should thoughtfully take notice that no Black people have been messing with them! Indeed, the most shameful aspect of all of this is that long after Jim Crow’s ultimate demise private property continues to be destroyed and innocent Black lives continue to be broken simply in order to bring out into the open what has always been prevalent enough for all to see anyway. Nevertheless, by and large with few exceptions the US corporate press has consistently refused to honestly cover this egregious cancer that continues to plague our society. If today, even in the face of mounting threats against the life of the President, the US Government still remains reluctant to protect American citizens from the vicious psychopathology of unsolicited racist violence, then these individuals and communities need to be referred for prosecution through the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

Around the very same time, within just hours of the November 4 election, numerous incidents of racist violence were recorded in California and in New York as well.11 As I documented in Part One there was simply a slew of racist incidents occurring; from cross burnings to Barack Obama’s likeness being ceremonially hung in effigy all throughout the country. Simply witnessing all of this unsolicited anger and intermittent violence turned against innocent African Americans, an alien landing here for the very first time might easily conclude that Black people had at one time actually enslaved White people in the West and not the other way around. Racism you must understand, is simply about ‘projection’. It is the psychopathology of turning one’s own ineptitude upon a convenient target. The weaker the individual, the more susceptible they are to its viral effects. Nevertheless, the question still remains: At this vital crossroads in our nation’s history, will this domestic terrorism finally be put to an end, or will America once again forfeit its soul and squander its promise in order to appease the crude psychopathology of the few?

It is an enormous tribute to the character of our new President that all throughout the campaign season HRC, the woman destined to become the new Secretary of State, never for one minute attempted to tamp down the racist comments and actions of some of her most ardent supporters; nonetheless he picked her for his cabinet anyway. From Texas to Appalachia, let us not forget that initially it was the HRC Campaign who sought to mine and nurture racist sentiments all throughout the nation. From the curious amount of people who shamelessly attempted to liken Barack Obama to the monkey Curious George12, to the irate women who stood sentinel in the lobby of the Democratic National Committee shouting “Denver-Denver!” American racism was on center-stage in Campaign 2008. One women even had the audacity to proclaim “There throwing it all away and giving it all to an inadequate Black man!” The Clinton Campaign had seduced this bloodlust long before the general election had even begun.13

Nonetheless, if HRC seemed indifferent to all of the mounting death threats and racist rhetoric that was being directed against her opponent, John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared to eagerly encourage it. When he was ultimately called on this by Congressman John Lewis, John McCain immediately attempted to flip the script; demanding that Obama denounce the congressman.14 This of course was amazing enough in itself. Yet, it could easily be recognized as simply one of the latest tactics of political tricknology. Whenever you wish to deflect a racist act or expression, all you simply need to do is to accuse the person who complains the loudest of “playing the race card!” Suddenly, the victim now becomes the culprit, who ought to be ashamed for “playing the victim” in the first place! In other words, simply by telling the truth as he saw it, Father Phleger was painted as a racist himself. By the time that we got to the general election the McCain Campaign had this down to a science. It is only the newest political fad of talking loud and saying nothing! Nevertheless, both the Clinton and the McCain campaigns ultimately appeared to be playing to the very same crowd.

Yes, in the end John McCain unlike Hillary Clinton actually sued for peace, and he conceded victory right on cue. However, true be told, this was a day late and a dollar short. Even after his own horrendous experience with dirty politics during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, in 2008 John McCain ran what could only be called a dishonorable campaign right to the bitter end. Make no mistake about it

What is all of this really about? Why are there so many people who have a hard time adjusting to the new reality of a multi-cultural American society? Why have death threats been on the rise against the President of the United States? To understand all of this you have to begin at the beginning, because societies are actually like factories in the production of human personalities.

During slavery, a Black woman was considered the legal property of her master, like a horse, or a table, or a shoe, and therefore she could not legally be raped. So it was that for centuries, White men had their way with Black women. After slavery, White men mostly in the south immediately began to cowardly project the almost Jack-the-Ripper-like attention that they had once wantonly displayed towards Black women’s bodies on to the Black male. From that very moment on, while millions of Black people were desperately scrambling simply to re-establish their randomly scattered families, until nearly a century later, the forged frightening specter of a fiendish Black male somehow on the prowl for the chastity of pure white women became the a prori excuse for wanton racist acts of inconceivably savage violence. By the turn of the Twentieth Century an average of at least one African American was lynched every week within the United States.

Furthermore, perhaps the most inconspicuous aspects of the early history of marketing in America, is just how readily racist iconography acted in collusion with Jim Crow. Let us not forget that before Hitler could justify the wholesale victimization of the Jewish people, it was necessary for him to draw a sharp caricature of them within the minds of the German people. This was an enormous propaganda campaign that sought to render the Jewish people as conceivably inhuman as possible. Not since the savage days of rope and fire has there been such a profuse proliferation of racist iconography as was so casually on display during the 2008 Campaign. The American press failed to adequately cover this, and absolutely no mention was ever made of the origins of these terrible images that have brought so much misery and pain to millions of Black people. Mrs. Obama has done well to object to Bennie Babies being named after her precious children. In a sense, this nation has truly forfeited its ability to handle the marketing of the image of Sahsa and Mila when the press continues to hide the reality of this nefarious history in its reporting. The daily advertising of some of the most common everyday household products and popular consumer goods featuring the distorted image of Black men, woman and children, has been generously covered in my essay titled Black Orchid in the White House Garden http://www.blackcommentator.com/283/283_black_orchid_aschenge_guest.html It is an issue that bears more scrutiny than the limits of this essay will allow. Nevertheless, from foodstuffs featuring images of half naked Black children running through the woods, usually being chased and often being eaten by animals, to the proliferation of pictures of African American men and women with grossly distorted lips and bulging eyes, these where the images which helped to mitigate the medieval barbarism of Jim Crow violence. When Chip Saltsman, a recent candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee says that sending members of his party a CD with a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” was simply some light-hearted humor, his indifference is strikingly similar to millions of sick racist White people who casually participated in several thousands gruesome acts of rope and fire during the Jim Crow era.

Fredrick Douglass once summed up the American Dream this way: “The struggle for freedom in America he said is a struggle to free Black men’s bodies and White men’s minds.” This is no less true today than it was 150 years ago. Douglass had the foresight to see this because he had witnessed first hand war and Reconstruction. He lived through the quick and shameful betrayal of the First Reconstruction and the Evil Birth of Jim Crow. Douglass was a true patriot, and he knew at that very moment that even after the long and painful centuries of Black enslavement, and the bitter recent years of such a divisive and fratricidal war, the nation had once again come to allow its lesser angels to prevail, and for this it would even if unwittingly forfeit the American Dream once more. Make no mistake about it, as we have witnessed in the past, when the American Dream is denied to one of us, it is denied to all of us. Now that a true progressive resides in the White House it shall take a newly energized and truly determined coalition of activists of every hue to once and for all secure the Dream before it is forfeited once again. History, past and future is watching us.

  

ENDNOTES

 http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1435400/death_threats_against_

obama_pg8.html?cat=9

20 MORE examples of Fox News biased video editing at www.youtube.com Tell the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve Goodwin Liu at judiciary.senate.gov OVER 100 MORE examples of Fox News Bias at www.youtube.com Dishonest video editing, namecalling, and personal attacks were all tools used by Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” last week to smear the good name of Prof. Goodwin Liu, President Barack Obama’s well qualified nominee to be a judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, as I show in this video. The clip of Bill O’Reilly accusing Jon Stewart of taking clips out of context comes from my previous video titled “Fox News Edits Out Jon Stewart Beating Bill O’Reilly?” that you can see at www.youtube.com The image of my “Fox News Bias in its Video Editing” playlist comes from the YouTube playlist page at www.youtube.com The clips I use of Bill O’Reily and Megyn Kelly discussing Prof Goodwin Liu come from a segment on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” broadcast April 1, 2010, a full copy of which is available on Media Matters’ website at mediamatters.org The clips I use of Prof. Goodwin Liu appearing on a 2008 PBS panel discussing the film “Traces of the Trade” comes from video available online at www.archive.org The images I use of Prof, Goodwin Liu’s resume comes from the UC Berkeley Law School webpage at www.law.berkeley.edu And, finally, the image I use of contact information for the Senate Judiciary Committee comes from the webpage at …

The President speaks to the press about recent developments with the BP Oil Spill, saying that he is pleased that a new cap appears to be working to capture the oil until relief wells can be completed.

Ever question whether stories have power to persuade?  Look no further than the current resident of the Oval Office.  Sure, President Barack Obama has charisma to spare.  True, he trumpeted a message of change and hope at a time when people were hungry for it.  And granted, he’s a potent symbol of the American dream.

 

But above all else, he’s a consummate storyteller.  And this skill has been a centerpiece of his efforts to persuade Americans.

 

Check out the 2004 Democratic Convention speech that introduced Obama to the country.  The freshman senator told his own tale (“the son of a Kansas farm girl and a foreign student from Kenya”) and his family’s tale, in a way that made it an American tale. 

 

“I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story,” Obama said explicitly.  “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”  In saying this, he reminded us of one of the cherished tales we tell about our country: that America is the land of freedom and opportunity.

 

Last November 4, Obama’s victory speech employed a powerful story to illustrate a key message: that America can change for the better.  He told of one Atlanta woman who cast her vote that day — 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, “born just one generation after slavery when there were no cars on the roads or planes in the sky.” He spoke of all the societal changes Cooper had seen in her life and made it a story of hope, a story of America weathering storms and growing – weaving his “Yes, We Can” message into the tale.

 

This is a textbook example of using a story to build a metaphor and make a larger point.  Stories pack emotional resonance, and emotions, after all, are what move us to action.

 

Did Obama’s storytelling work?  It turned a skinny, big-eared freshman senator into a president in just four years.

 

Obama’s storytelling skill hasn’t escaped the attention of the media.  A March 8 article in the Los Angeles Times noted that, “Storytelling is at the core of Obama’s public speaking, over-riding the modern obsession with the sound bite.”

 

The President’s chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, shares Obama’s passion for story.  According to the Times article, he explains his job to friends like this: “Tell a story.  That’s the most important part of every speech, more than any given line: Does it tell a story from beginning to end?”

 

Obama and Favreau turned to story power in the president’s first address to the joint session of Congress.  They told the tale of how the country had fallen into economic crisis and how the administration intended to pull it out.

 

Did their story work?  The plan’s effectiveness remains to be seen.  But despite all the doom and gloom in the news, Obama’s rating rose in opinion polls and he bolstered support for his program.

 

Got a hard sell ahead of you?  Take a tip from politics.  Frame your argument in the form of a compelling story, packed with emotion.  Extract from it a metaphor that calls your listener to action.  And watch how the world listens.

 

The President and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France speak to the media after meeting at the White House. March 30, 2010.

In his first Oval Office address, President Obama spoke to the country about the administration’s response to the BP oil spill and building America’s clean-energy future.