Tag Archives: Obama

It kills me not to be president, says Romney

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As President Barack Obama faces one crisis after another, Mitt Romney, his Republican opponent in the November election, says “it kills me” not to be in the White House finding solutions to the nation’s problems.

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“I’ll look at what’s happening right now, I wish I were there,” Romney told Fox News Sunday said in his first television interview since the election suggesting he would have been more effective in the current political situation.

Accusing Obama of “campaigning” rather than governing as the sequester – $85 billion across the board spending cuts that kicked in Friday – loomed, he said: “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.”

“The president is the leader of the nation. The president brings people together, does the deals, does the trades, knocks the heads together; the president leads. And – and I don’t see that kind of – of leadership happening right now,” he said.

Romney said that he was convinced he’d win until Ohio’s vote came in, and that he damaged his campaign by failing to attract black and Hispanic voters and speaking too freely in his infamous “47 percent” comments.

“I think we were convinced we would win. We saw that the polls were very close, but we knew that the energy and passion was with our voters. My heart said we were going to win,” he said.

Romney said he doesn’t look back at the campaign with anger or regret.

“You look back at the campaign and say, ‘OK, what did the president do well?’ And you acknowledge that his campaign did a number of things very effectively.

“Of course you rehearse all the mistakes that you made, and I went through a number of my mistakes, I’m sure. Then you think about the things that were out of your control. But you move on. I don’t spend my life looking back,” said Romney

World’s 10 Most Followed Leaders on Twitter

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There was a time when a leader rode on high horse, but now it’s more like being a little birdie that tweets. The technological innovation has changed it even for the leaders who now like to match their steps with the crowd. The list is formed as per the 2012 ranking report on the usage of the social media by the state heads prepared by the Digital Policy Council, an international, non-partisan ‘think tank’ on the 21st Century Governance. Here are the top 10 leaders with high Twitter records, as per rediff.com.

Barack Obama
With over 24 million followers and an additional 15 million followers in a year it’s no surprise that President Obama is on the top spot of the list. His 2012 re election was a major Twitter record breaker. The picture sent out on Twitter of President Obama and the first lady Michelle Obama with the tag, ‘Four more years’, after his win is the most retweeted tweet of all time. On the day of his win over 31 million election related tweets were sent out.

Hugo Chavez
The President of Venuzvela, Hugo Chavez has maintained his number 2 spot with the 2 million followers who joined his account in 2012. When compared to President Obama’s follower count Hugo Chavez has a lot to make up for as he has 20 million less followers compared to Obama.

Abdullah Gül
The President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül has enhanced his number of followers by over 2 million in 2012. Being an early adopter of Twitter, Abdullah Gül does most of his tweeting in Turkish, however the significant statements are also made in English as and when it’s required.
On his first visit to the Silicon Valley in California he tweeted, “This is the first time a Turkish president travels to this region of the US. Here is where technology that changes our lives is born,” reported rediff.com.

Queen Rania of Jordan
Queen Rania, the queen consort of the king of Jordan is on the fourth place. Since she’s facing criticism, which remarked on her playing too prominent part in ‘running Jordan’, Queen Rania had scaled down on her public activities. However this didn’t cap her account form followers wanting to join. Instead the number of followers grew as more than one million followers joined her account. On her Twitter account she called herself as, ‘a mum and a wife with a really cool day job,’ and now has over 2 million followers.

Dmitry Medvedev
The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is a fresh new entry on Twitter top 10 list in 2012. He has separate accounts to tweet in his Russian language and in English. He created his personal account on his name in both the languages in 2010 and at present the account in his native language has the largest followers. Following Medvedev’s pattern of Twitter execution, many of the world leaders have opened Twitter accounts in both their native language and English, which allows them to reach out to the large public.

Dilma Rouseff
The President of Brazil Dilma Rouseff is on the sixth spot. She is the 36th and present President of Brazil and has been in Office since January 2011. She is also the first women to be elected President in Brazil. During her election in 2011 she had a reasonable number of followers. Since then she was barely consistent at maintaining her account, even then she has a large number of followers joining her account indicating the keen interest of people in Brazil to connect with their President and fill the gap.

Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner
The President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner, better known as Cristina Kirchner or CFK is on the seventh spot.  She is the 55th and the present President of Argentina.
In 2010 when the Argentinean President appeared on Twitter, the political setup in Argentina completely transformed as Twitter turned into a central combat zone between politicians and citizens. Cristina Kirchner sent out five tweets in succession when she was reelected in 2012, congratulating Venezuela with ‘Your victory is also ours’.

Juan Manuel Santos
The President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos is number 8 on the list. He is another one of the new entries among the top ten leaders, with an increased number of followers estimated to over a million since 2011. In 2012 the tweets on his account got tough since he made it clear that he has his own agenda for Colombia rather than working on those set by the former president Alvaro Uribe.

Enrique Pena Nieto, Mexican President
Enrique Pena Nieto is the 57th and the present President of Mexico. He has remained on the list with his increased popularity on Twitter. He was declared the elected President after the 2012 general election. He returned to power in December 2012 after succeeding Felipe Calderon as the President. On his election day he tweeted, “Now is the time to start a new stage of work, for the good of Mexico,” as per rediff.com. The comment was widely shared.

Sheikh Mohammed
The Prime Minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed is on the 10th spot on the Twitter list. In 2012 Sheikh Mohammed’s twitter account had 910,000 followers within a span of a year. In the country he is the second most commented subject as per a recent study. He often shares the events he attended, future plans, ideas and various achievements on his account. Some find his tweet as ‘an image of equality, encouragement and comfortable interaction with citizens’.

The Prime minister of India Manmohan Singh is ranked 19th by Digital Policy Council as the most followed leader of the world on Twitter. Singh superseded British Prime Minister David Cameron and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, within a span of 12 months.

The leaders who constantly drive to make it better for the people and the country they serve create a special bond with the people. This bond is unique between the state and people, and now with modern technology it is convenient for both state and the public to bridge that gap, and express their views with more lucidity.

Obama urges solidarity as America mourns shooting victims

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President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to join in solidarity as they mourn the victims of a shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school, saying the hearts of parents across the country were “heavy with hurt” for the lives lost.

In his weekly radio and Internet speech, Obama also repeated a message he put forth on Friday, just hours after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, on the need to set aside politics and “take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.”

But Obama went no further than that, and again stopped short of specifically calling for tighter gun-control laws.

Twenty children were killed by a heavily armed gunman who opened fire at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday. He killed at least 26 people there before turning his gun on himself.

“We grieve for the families of those we lost. And we keep in our prayers the parents of those who survived,” Obama said.

The shooting spree reignited a debate over gun-control in a country with a flourishing gun culture and a strong gun lobby, which has discouraged most politicians from any major efforts to address the easy availability of firearms.

Obama mostly steered clear of the issue during his successful re-election campaign this year, and it remains unclear whether he might be willing to take a more assertive approach now that he has secured a second term.

OBAMA URGED TO ACT

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who runs a coalition of mayors on gun policy, said on Friday the Democratic president should press ahead despite likely opposition from Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives.

“We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

Ticking off some of the recent shooting incidents, Obama said in his Saturday address: “As a nation, we have endured far too many of these tragedies in the last few years.”

His response to previous high-profile shootings was to call for a national conversation on how to curb gun violence.

“This weekend, Michelle and I are doing what I know every parent is doing – holding our children as close as we can and reminding them how much we love them,” he said.

“There are families in Connecticut who can’t do that today. And they need all of us now,” he said. “All of us can extend a hand to those in need – to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them.”

The 20-year-old gunman, who law enforcement sources identified as Adam Lanza, opened fire on a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which serves children from ages 5 to 10.

Authorities found 18 children and seven adults, including the gunman, dead at the school, and two children were pronounced dead later after being take to a hospital.

“Most of those who died were just young children with their whole lives ahead of them. And every parent in America has a heart heavy with hurt,” Obama said.

Obama had to struggle to control his emotions during his televised statement on Friday in the White House briefing where his voice cracked and he wiped away tears.

Partisan bickering in Washington, divided by a battle over a looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending cuts, was put on hold amid mourning for the Connecticut dead.

House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, said he had canceled the Republican weekly address for Saturday “so that President Obama can speak for the entire nation at this time of mourning.”

Kids Know Who the Bullshitter Is: Obama

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Presidential battles may not always be fought with sweet talk but US president Barack Obama took his opponent bashing to another level when he termed his republican rival Mitt Romney a “bullshitter”.

The remarks that came in an interview to Rolling Stone magazine as a light-hearted aside has raised a few eyebrows.

Obama has repeatedly called Romney untrustworthy for changing his positions on important issues and even coined a new term for his condition — ‘Romnesia’.

This time, however, the President took it a notch higher when, responding to a suggestion on his popularity among kids, he said the young ones could see who was a ‘bullshitter’.

“You know, kids have good instincts,” Obama noted.

“They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell,” the US President said.

Obama said this when the interviewer told him that his six-year-old had asked him to convey to Obama that ‘You can do it‘.

“That’s the only advice I need,” he said.

“I do very well, by the way, in that demographic. Ages six to 12? I’m a killer,” he joked.

The Obama Campaign later sought to clarify by telling journalists not to get “distracted by the word”.

“The President is someone who says what he means and does what he says,” spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said.

Iran would face a possible ban on sanctions – OBAMA

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U.S. President Barack Obama warned Iran on Thursday it would face the toughest possible sanctions for an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, as officials eyed action against its central bank.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday accused Iran of fomenting instability but pledged a “measured response” over the alleged plot that has heightened tensions between OPEC’s two top oil producers.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said, on a visit to Austria, that the evidence showed “Iran is responsible” for the alleged plot and said Tehran had tried to “meddle” in the affairs of Arab states before.

In Washington, Obama told a news conference that the United States would not take any options off the table in dealing with Iran, a phrase U.S. officials regularly use toward Tehran that is diplomatic code for the possibility of military action.

“This is part of a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior by the Iranian government,” Obama said in his first public comments on the affair.

U.S. authorities on Tuesday said they had broken up a plot by two men linked to Iran’s security agencies to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir. One was arrested last month while the other was believed to be in Iran.

Iran called the accusations a fabrication designed to hurt its relations with its neighbors .

The U.S. Treasury Department said it was weighing more sanctions against Iran’s central bank to tighten the financial screws and deepen the country’s estrangement from the international financial community.

Obama came to office in 2009 promising to seek diplomatic engagement with Iran.

But his outreach failed to halt Iran’s nuclear advances and he has instead spearheaded several packages of international sanctions. The plot raises tensions to a new level between the Obama administration and Iran, which says its nuclear work is peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.

Obama told reporters during a news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak the United State would continue “to apply the toughest sanctions and continue to mobilize the international community to make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behavior.”

“Now, we don’t take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with Iran, but what you can expect is that we will continue to apply the sorts of pressure that will have a direct impact on the Iranian government until it makes a better choice in terms of how it’s going to interact with the rest of the international community,” Obama said.

‘RULES OF THE ROADS’

U.S. financial institutions are already generally banned from doing business with any bank in Iran, including the central bank. But the U.S. Treasury said more action, if it had international support, could further isolate the institution.

The White House has persistently sought to highlight the disparity between Iran’s support for popular uprisings against other autocratic regimes in the region and its brutal treatment of protesters at home, and Obama repeated this message.

“We will continue to work to see how we can bring about a Iranian government that is actually responsive to its people but also following the rules of the roads that other countries and the international community follow,” he said.

Iran denied the charges and expressed outrage at the accusations.

“We hold them (Iran) accountable for any action they take against us,” Prince Saud said in Vienna, where he was discussing opening a religious dialogue center. “Any action they take against us will have a measured response from Saudi Arabia.”

“The goal is pretty clear — they want to throw up problems, break good relations and foster instability in international relations,” he added. “It hurts us very much. Iran is one of our neighbors, it is an Islamic land, and we had never thought that Iran could take such a step and plan such an attack.”

Asked what actions Saudi Arabia might take, he said: “We have to wait and see.”

Iran meanwhile painted the accusation as a plot to create rifts between the two Middle East powers.

“We have no problem with Saudi Arabia. … Though our interpretation of regional developments are different … I hope Saudis are aware of the fact that our enemies do not want us to have convergence and cooperation,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told state radio on Thursday.

Some Iran experts were skeptical about the plot, saying they could not see the motive for such an assassination. Iran has in the past killed its own dissidents abroad, but an attempt to target an ambassador of another country would be a highly unusual departure.

Iran said the allegations threaten stability in the Gulf — where Saudi Arabia and Iran, the biggest regional powers, are fierce rivals and Washington has a huge military presence.

Russia, which built a nuclear power plant for Iran, expressed concern over reports of the alleged plot.

The reports “have been treated with concern in Moscow,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Russia has used pressure on Iran as a diplomatic tool in its relations with Washington, which have improved in recent years.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran soured after the 1979 revolution that brought Shiite Muslim clerics to power on the other side of the Gulf. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran consider themselves protectors of Islam’s two main rival sects.

The rift sharpened this year after Saudi Arabia deployed troops to the Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain to crush a Shi’ite-led uprising there.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Angus McDowall and Sylvia Westall; Editing by Will Dunham)

- Reuters

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