America's Most Protected Home

If you're into any movie involving the White House blowing up, then on May 22, you'll have your chance.  You may remember me talking about the upcoming movie, Olympus Has Fallen, but little did you know it takes thousands of people to protect our precious home of homes.

You can learn more about what it takes to protect the White House and the numerous attempts to infiltrate it with this awesome infographic below, courtesy of Ernesto Olivares and The Huffington Post.  Feel free to click on the graphic to enlarge.

Classified: Protecting the Most Famous Residence in the World infographic by ernestoolivares.

While someone did make the comment, "I don't think it is a good idea to be giving out this information so freely, right down to how many uniformed secret service men/women, seconds to walk from oval office to residence, how many stories below east wing, swat team...... ", I doubt there's much we truly know.   I'm sure there's plenty hidden we don't know about.

If you liked today's post, you might also like my post about America's Most Protected Car - The Presidential Limousine.

Movies To Watch: Olympus Has Fallen

It's no secret I'm a sucker for Presidential politics, or politics in general.  But political movies are my weakness!  

Olympus Has Fallen premieres on March 22, and already I cannot wait for this movie to hit my local theater.  The movie revolves around a group of terrorists taking over the White House and a disgraced presidential guard doing whatever he can to rescue the president.  

I'm thinking Die Hard and Independence Day, but 20 times better!  Can't Wait!

The trailer is riveting - check it out.

I Want a Dyke For President by Zoe Leonard

20 years ago the AIDS crisis was at an all time high, people were anxious, and it didn't help that lies about the disease were spreading like wildfire.  Today, so many young people have no clue as to how desperate the situation was becoming. They have no idea that people like me worried that having sex might kill you. But even if you're too young to get that part of Zoe Leonard’s expression in the document below, you can’t help but feel the urgency and fury of the rest of it.  I couldn't wait to share this with my readers, because it makes me hope and believe that a whole new generation of angry young people will express themselves with the same amount of poignant clarity when they say aloud, “This is who I want for president."

Who Is Zoe Leonard?

Presidential Campaign Costs Since President Abraham Lincoln

Barack Obama spent $730 million getting to the White House in 2008—twice as much as George W. Bush spent 4 years earlier and more than 260 times what Abraham Lincoln spent in his first election (as measured in 2011 dollars). Looking at the total costs of presidential elections over the past 150 years, it would seem that the White House is the ultimate recession-proof commodity. Full Story here

Coincidence or Not?

So is it a coincidence or not, that the assassinations of two presidents share similarities that are so eerily captivating?  Don't believe me?  Check them out here...

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Issue 1

As most of you may know, I'm a huge fan of quotations and typography.  

When I used Facebook as my only source of communication with the outside world I would post them on a daily basis.  The main reason I resorted to blogging was because I couldn't find issues or topics I had previously discussed, and became frustrated with that.

Barack Obama Burdened

I came across a typographical portrait of President Obama while "googling" for some pics and wanted to share it with my viewers.  The portrait, created by Dylan Roscover consists of 12,680 individual characters, and was featured on the Table of Contents page of the February 1, 2010 edition of TIME magazine.

About the artist, I couldn't have stated it any better myself:

"Dylan Roscover is a brilliant graphic designer who creates a wide variety of striking digital media pieces. This portrait of Obama uses typography to expertly illustrate the pressure and incredible burdens our president has to deal with while in office. The craftsmanship and composition of this typography portrait is remarkable and definitely deserves a standing ovation" - Taro13

I hope to continue this as a daily or weekly series, it all depends on the amount of time I have in the day.  Please feel free to share your thoughts or opinions on this.

Margaret Thatcher's Long Lost Twin Sister Appears!

Nearly 30 years ago in 1982, the start of the Falklands War was on every Brit's mind.  The Iron Lady was in control and no one could topple her.  She became best friends with Ronald Reagan, and thus began the hatred her country grew towards her.  She was to Britain what Ronald Reagan was to us; helped the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Not to go off subject, but here long lost twin has been found.  Here she is,  >>>

and she hasn't aged one bit.  LOL, just kidding.

I swear, Meryl Streep as Thatcher is remarkable.  Filming for The Iron Lady started on January 31st, and this could very well be Streep's long overdue, third Oscar win. For the rest of the cast and what this movie is all about, you can go here and here.

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

While everyone is enjoying their Superbowl today, people like Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh will be out celebrating what would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday.  C'mon people, really?  The man is dead, let him rest in peace;  And besides, didn't Ron Reagan, his son, say he had Alzheimer's while President?  That's probably why he forgot he sold weapons to Iran...

"But Reagan was not the man conservatives claimed he was. This image of Ronald Reagan as a conservative superhero is a myth created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief." - Alex Seitz-Wald.

Reagan, almost all the time strayed away from his agenda.  He raised taxes more than eleven times, tripled our federal deficit, and vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill for God's sake.


ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendency.

I, for one, will be over at my in-laws having subway sandwiches and watching a few seconds of the game; I say a few seconds, because I dislike both team with a passion.  Conservatives will always try to picture Reagan in a positive light, when in fact, there was so much about him that wouldn't sit well with conservatives today.  Where was the support back when he was President?  Almost everyone who is supportive of him today, were not there to support him then.

All The Presidents' Colleges

I really enjoyed reading over this chart, and thought you might like it also. It's really fascinating knowing which of our Presidents went to college and which didn't.
.

click to enlarge

2008 Election - First Time Since 1952

Originally posted on June 1, 2007 on Peter's old MySpace Blog. Used as a reference in commemorating Blog 3000 on April 16, 2013

Just to let everyone know - 2008 will be a very important year in our lives.  This will be the first election without incumbents since 1952.

If you have no idea what that means; when a United States President leaves office, his Vice President is more often than not considered a leading candidate and likely nominee to succeed him.

2008 will mark the first time since 1952 in which there is neither and incumbent president nor an incumbent vice-president running in the presidential election.This will also be the most expensive election in American History.

In January 2007, Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner stated that the 2008 U.S. presidential race will be "the most expensive election in American history". Toner estimated that the 2008 race will be a "$1 billion election", and that to be "taken seriously", a candidate will need to raise at least $100 million by the end of 2007.