vendredi 31 décembre 2010

Pas facile d'avoir un ex-Président au-dessus de son épaule...





Article intéressant sur le site du Huffington Post. On y fait le point sur le fonctionnement de l'équipe économique d'Obama, mais aussi sur sa relation trouble avec Bill Clinton.
Extrait:
Obama's relationship with the Clintons remains strained and Bill Clinton constantly complains in private about how he's been disrespected by the administration, writes Alter.

Though they talk frequently, the former president was annoyed that Obama didn't give him credit for helping to negotiate a spy swap that led to the release from Russian jails of four Russians who had been working for the CIA (in the wake of the bust of Russian spies living in American suburbs six months ago), Clinton's aides tell Alter. In addition, Clinton was miffed that Samantha Power, who insulted Hillary during the 2008 campaign, was chosen as an emissary to Bosnia in July. ("Bill Clinton might not have accepted the job, but he wanted to be asked," Alter writes.)

"An old friend compared him [Clinton] to a big puppy dog who just needed some attention to be happy and helpful."
Clinton felt dissed because, after negotiating the release by North Korea of two imprisoned American journalists, he was told to travel on a separate plane so as not to overshadow the arrival of the women. "Some of these guys in the White House act small," one aide told Alter.

And Clinton's team was angry that former protégés like Rahm Emanuel didn't show the former president proper respect. After Clinton "worked like a nerd" to prepare a detailed 30-page memo on how to incentivize banks with loan guarantees to spur job creation, the White
House ignored the memo for a few months, and then treated Clinton like a "prop" during Obama's meeting with CEOs. When a Clinton aide complained to Emanuel, "Are you serious?", the chief of staff replied that Clinton should be grateful he was on the president's schedule at all, writes Alter.

Un autre 31 décembre: Harry Truman déclare la fin des hostilités!




J'ai toujours été fasciné par le destin de Harry Truman. Homme d'origine modeste, vétéran de la guerre, sénateur probe, vice-président puis Président sans y avoir été vraiment préparé. Outre sa célèbre citation pendant les discussions sur l'utilisation de l'arme nucléaire (If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen), je retiens celle qui, à mon humble avis, reflète le mieux son état d'esprit après le décès de Roosevelt: "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

États-Unis Vers 2011 en caricatures!



We can do it! Geraldine Doyle meurt à 86 ans.


Décès de Geraldine Doyle, le modèle pour le célèbre personnage de Rosie de Riveter. Voici l'article d'AFP:

"A Michigan factory worker used as the unwitting model for the wartime Rosie the Riveter poster whose inspirational "We Can Do It!" message became an icon of the feminist movement has died.
Geraldine Doyle died Sunday, a spokesman for the Hospice House of Mid Michigan told AFP. She was 86.
Doyle didn't realize she had a famous face until she was flipping through a magazine in 1982 and spotted a reproduction of the poster and said "Look! That's me!" her daughter told AFP.
But while Doyle recognized her smile under the red and white polka dot bandana, the strong arm held up in a fist wasn't hers.
"That was the artists pumping up the muscles," daughter Stephanie Gregg said in a telephone interview.
"She was 5-10, very slender. She always liked to be glamorous."
Doyle was just 17 when she took a job at a metal pressing plant near Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1942 at the height of World War II.
She quit about two weeks later after learning that another woman had badly injured her hand doing the same job -- Doyle was worried she'd lose the ability to play the cello, her daughter said.
She was there, however, when a United Press International photographer came to the factory while documenting the contribution of women to the war effort.
A picture of Doyle was later used by J. Howard Miller, a graphic artist at Westinghouse, for the poster which was aimed at deterring strikes and absenteeism.
The poster was not widely seen until the 1980s when it was embraced by the feminist movement as a potent symbol of women's empowerment.
The iconic image now graces a US postage stamp and has been used to sell lunch boxes, aprons, mugs, t-shirts and figurines.
The term "Rosie the Riveter" stems from a 1942 song honoring the women who took over critical factory jobs when American men went off to war.
Another Michigan woman, Rose Will Monroe, was the best-known "Rosie" after being featured in a wartime promotional film about female factory workers.
While Doyle didn't spend much time in a factory, she was still a strong woman and inspiration to many, Gregg said.
"She really did live the 'We Can Do It!' idea," Gregg said. "She had a real go get 'em attitude."
But she was quick to correct people who thought she was the original Rosie the Riveter, Gregg said.
"She would say that she was the 'We Can Do It!" girl," Gregg said. "She never wanted to take anything away from all the Rosie the Riveters who were doing the riveting."

vendredi 24 décembre 2010

Joyeux Noël à la manière de Kinkade, Rockwell et Nelson




Trois peintres que j'apprécie et trois manières de présenter Noël. Thomas Kinkade et son regard sur New York (Rockefeller center, dans Christmas in New York), Norman Rockwell et l'une de ses nombreuses représentations de Noël ainsi que Kadir Nelson et "Christmas eve".

Joyeux Noël!

jeudi 23 décembre 2010

Amateurs de sports bonsoir: Subban et Sport Illustrated



Montreal's Mighty Mouth... C'est le titre de l'article consacré à P.K. Subban dans l'édition du 20 décembre de Sports Illustrated.

Un extrait:

"Subban is a one-man on-ice filibuster. Nothing salacious—"We wouldn't allow that, because it's disrespectful," says veteran Montreal winger Mathieu Darche. No, mostly Subban harangues opponents with a playground you-can't-beat-me braggadocio, which has prompted one NHL assistant to observe, "It's almost like he's an athlete in a different sport."

"Some people take it one way," says Islanders center John Tavares, a friend of Subban's since youth hockey, "and some people take it the other." Which means poorly. Subban's critics think he leveraged a strong playoff month—he was recalled from the minors last spring and quickly became a 20-minute-plus, all-situations defenseman for a team that reached the Eastern Conference final—without genuflecting to the traditions of the game. They think he yaps too much, too soon. At least other players who personify the sound of fingernails on a blackboard—among them Rangers left wing Sean Avery and Stars center Steve Ott (box, page 72)—have had time to amass a body of work. Subban has alienated many NHL players two months into his first regular season."


LA réputation de P.K. semble faire le tour de la ligue rapidement et si certains pensent qu'ils devraient mieux canaliser son énergie, personne ne nie son immense talent et sa détermination:

"If you look at the Subbans's albums, P.K. is always in the middle of the photos, center ring in a family circus. Karl, who emigrated from Jamaica to Ontario at age 11, nudged his eldest son toward hockey even though he had played basketball at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. Karl would finish work as vice principal of a Toronto adult-education program and drive P.K. downtown to the outdoor rink at Nathan Phillips Square. They would do the family skate, then stay to play pond hockey. This was the snow-globe ambience the NHL tries to re-create in its outdoor games: Sticks were dropped at mid-ice, and the younger Subban often was given the honor of choosing sides. Free-form hockey would last until one, sometimes two in the morning. Then Karl and P.K. would stop for a slice of pizza on the way home.

P.K. didn't have to get up until 11:30 a.m. His half-day of kindergarten was in the afternoon.

Those frosty nights are encoded in Subban's hockey DNA. For now, though, he's an artist of the expressionist school who plays for a paint-by-numbers coach. The conservative Jacques Martin did not hesitate to banish Subban to the press box after a 15-game stretch in which he had one goal and two assists—glum numbers for a defenseman with generous power-play time—though he doesn't want to suppress Subban's passion so much as channel it. "There's no [other Canadien] who can take the puck from behind the net and carry it to the other blue line," says Shutt. "Subban'll make mistakes, but the guy who made the most mistakes was Bobby Orr, because he always had the puck. Subban'll have the puck."

"I'm coming after his black ass,"



Jimmy who? Jimmy McMillan, un nouvel opposant pour Obama! Ohhhhh boy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/23/jimmy-mcmillan-rent-damn-high-president_n_800898.html

Une fois n'est pas coutume, la présentation sur wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McMillan

Caricatures du jour



Le Père Noël qui survole Sarah Palin Alaska et une dernière sur "Don't ask, don't tell"!

mercredi 22 décembre 2010

Nouvelles caricatures!




Jésus trouvé par GPS, le traité START juste avant Noël et un nouveau clin d'oeil à "Don't ask, don't tell".

Back to Normalcy Is America really in decline?


J'aime bien Paul Kennedy et son dernier texte mérite un détour... En déclin les États-Unis ou tout simplement de "retour à la normale"?

L'article complet dans The new republic: http://www.tnr.com/article/magazine/79753/normalcy-american-decline-decadence?passthru=MDM2OWMyMDViNjYxNzkxMWYzOTMxNTZjMGEzY2U3NGM&utm_source=Editors+and+Bloggers&utm_campaign=83163618ea-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email

Where on earth is the United States headed? Has it lost its way? Is the Obama effect, which initially promised to halt the souring of its global image, over? More seriously, is it in some sort of terminal decline? Has it joined the long historical list of number one powers that rose to the top, and then, as Rudyard Kipling outlined it, just slowly fell downhill: “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / At one with Nineveh and Tyre”? Has it met its match in Afghanistan? And has its obsession with the ill-defined war on terrorism obscured attention to the steady, and really much more serious, rise of China to the center of the world’s stage? Will the dollar fall and fall, like the pound sterling from the 1940s to the 1970s?

It is easy to say “yes” to all those questions, and there are many in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and in the United States itself, who do so. But there is another way to think about America’s current position in today’s mightily complicated world, and it goes like this: All that is happening, really, is that the United States is slowly and naturally losing its abnormal status in the international system and returning to being one of the most prominent players in the small club of great powers. Things are not going badly wrong, and it is not as if America as becoming a flawed and impotent giant. Instead, things are just coming back to normal.

Une victoire, peut-être deux?


Le Président Obama signait il y a quelques minutes la fin de la politique "Don't ask, don't tell" qui obligeait les gais et lesbiennes à dissimuler leur orientation pour servir l'armée américaine. Il s'agit d'un effort à long terme de plusieurs groupes et politiciens, mais également de la réalisation d'une promesse électorale du candidat Obama. Après avoir essuyé les critiques de son aile progressiste, le Président leur "offre" maintenant un "cadeau de Noël"... Malgré l'économie chancelante et une féroce opposition républicaine, le bilan du Président est loin d'être mauvais. On critique sa retenue... Je souligne son audace! Il lui manque encore un peu de "punch" dans ses attaques (ça viendra lorsque les républicains identifieront leur candidat(e)) ainsi qu'une ou deux bonnes nouvelles au plan économique...

mardi 21 décembre 2010

Caricatures du jour...





Hummm, certaines d'un goût douteux, principalement sur le "Don't ask, don't tell". En cette période de Noël, ma préférée est celle qui fait allusion à la loi de l'Arizona visant à freiner l'immigration illégale.

David Axelrod prépare 2012...


La campagne à la présidence de Barack Obama en 2008 avait été magnifiquement orchestrée et un des principaux responsables de la victoire d'Obama fut David Axelrod. Ce dernier y va de plusieurs observations dans une entrevue à Newsweek. Son bilan des deux dernières années est intéressant.

À lire:http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/20/david-axelrod-on-the-2012-campaign.html

Obama candidat en 2012? La réponse de David Axelrod: "None of my personal planning is predicated on the notion that he’s not going to run again. He obviously hasn’t formally made that announcement or decision, but look, this is a man who is deeply committed to this country and believes that the future is going to be better, and wants to fight for that and work for that and motivate people on both sides to pursue the things that will make that happen. And I’m sure he feels that he can do that more readily than anyone else who is available. And he’ll make his case at that time, but I’m pretty confident that I won’t have a lot of idle time in 2012./

samedi 18 décembre 2010

L'histoire à la rescousse? Retour sur le 20e amendement...


Très bon article dans le Washington Post de ce matin! Un retour sur le vingtième amendement qui devait éviter les "lame-duck" session, des séances au Congrès pendant lesquelles les politiciens défaits en novembre sont brièvement de retour comme législateurs.

"In 1933, historians say, the country ratified a constitutional amendment intended to kill off sessions like this - in which defeated legislators return to legislate. The headline in The Washington Post at the time was "Present Lame Duck Session Will Be Last."

Le coeur du problème selon l'auteur de l'article (et l'avis d'historiens):

"This amendment will free Congress of the dead hand of the so-called 'lame duck,' " Rep. Wilburn Cartwright (D-Okla.) said as it was debated in 1932.

But there was a problem. The amendment didn't actually say it would end lame-duck Congresses forever. Its text only moved Congress's end date from March back to early January (it also shifted the presidential inauguration from March to Jan. 20).

At that time, historians say, it was inconceivable that lawmakers would journey back to Washington to meet for a few weeks after Thanksgiving.

"The big mistake of the crafters of the 20th Amendment was that they didn't really anticipate airplane travel," said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale University law professor. "It takes a lot of time to go from a district in Texas by train to Washington, D.C. Who's going to schlep there?"

Intéressant, non?

Le lien pour l'article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121703572_2.html

La santé et les américains"élus": deux caricatures



J'adore celle sur le football!!!!

jeudi 16 décembre 2010

Caricature du jour: Obama en Père Noël!


Un succès?

A legend signs off...



Dernière de Larry King Live ce soir après 25 ans! Un "repère" dans mon suivi de l'histoire et de la politique américaine, Larry King fait partie de mon univers télévisuel!

"King has conducted some 50,000 interviews in a broadcasting career where he worked for decades in radio before joining CNN in 1985. He's recorded more than 6,000 shows for CNN."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/16/larry-kings-last-show_n_797537.html

Des montages sur CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/16/larry.king.profile/index.html?iref=obnetwork

Obama creuse l'écart contre... Palin!


Obama devance maintenant Sarah Palin par 22 points pour la présidentielle 2012. Bien sûr, nous ne ne savons pas encore qui sera le/la candidat-e du côté républicain, mais Obama a augmenté son avance depuis le dernier sondage...

Lien pour la nouvelle sur CNN: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/16/poll-obama-vs-palin-in-2012/

mercredi 15 décembre 2010

Caricatures du jour prise II!





J'aime bien celle du futur speaker de la Chambre qu'on surnomme le "weeper of the house" depuis qu'il a éclaté en sanglots deux fois!

Un faible également pour la récupération de l'historique "Join or die" deBenjamin Franklin...

Caricatures du jour!



L'influence d'internet sur la liste de suggestions au Père Noël et une vision un brin "critique" des compromis politiques!

Les Tours de Laliberté migrent: rejoignez-moi sur le site du Journal de Québec et du Journal de Montréal

Depuis un certain temps je me demandais comment faire évoluer mon petit carnet web. La réponse m'est parvenue par le biais d'u...