WOULD BARACK OBAMA "CHANGE" HIS SPOUSE FOR A MAN? AFTERALL HE SAYS HE IS THE "AGENT OF CHANGE"

GAY PROTESTERS OUTSIDE OF MORMON CHURCH IN CALIFORNIA

According to Webster's Dictionary it defines the following word:

Change: to alter.

Let us keep in mind this brief definition because last week Californians voted against same sex marriage in what seemed to me a stunning verdict from the people of that state. No, not stunned because I am for same sex marriage but because it was California that voted against it. In my mind if any state would pass it with flying colors it would be California.

Actually it freaked me out.

Through out the union we have always seen California as pro-gay life style, I guess we were wrong. However, it was not the mere fact that Californians voted against this measure that caught my attention but what happened afterwards.

Protests by the gay community against churches in that state.

That freaked me out even more.

Churches?

Yup, some members of the gay community have suddenly got this thing about retribution for those churches that placed their entire heart against the measure at the ballot box.

What in the WORLD HAS HAPPENED?

Hey, I am not a mormon, or a Jehova's Witness or a Catholic for that matter, but I was taught "RESPECT". If one cannot respect the religious institutions of this world then I ask, WHAT IS HOLY IN THIS WORLD?

I did not see the gay community protesting Islamic Mosques after 911, afterall surely the terrorists violated their rights by killing some homosexuals in the Twin Towers. It is easy to see why that segment of the world population: ISLAM, can see us as the GREAT SATAN. Once they see protests outside of churches that is the last straw.

However, I AM SO HAPPY BARACK OBAMA IS OUR NEW PRESIDENT BECAUSE HE WILL BRING MORALITY BACK TO THE UNITED STATES. Since Obama is a Christian and is married to a woman every American would want to follow in his footsteps because he is the agent of change.

Right?

Wait...in the article below the protesters also used the word - CHANGE. I even highlighted the words. Darn, now I am confused. Obama uses the word "change" and the gay protesters use the word "change" as well.

Wait! Is this what Barack Obama meant?

Naw...it must be a misunderstanding. He would NEVER allow the ALTERING of marriage between a man and a woman being that he himself is married to a woman. Does this mean he is going to change his wife for a man?

Hogwash!

The BOSTON NEWS reported:

"Gay rights supporters waving rainbow colors marched, chanted and danced in cities coast to coast Saturday to protest the vote that banned gay marriage in California and to urge supporters not to quit the fight for the right to wed.

Crowds gathered near public buildings in cities large and small, including Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Fargo, to vent their frustrations, celebrate gay relationships and renew calls for change.

"Civil marriages are a civil right, and we're going to keep fighting until we get the rights we deserve as American citizens," Karen Amico said in Philadelphia, holding up a sign reading "Don't Spread H8".

"We are the American family, we live next door to you, we teach your children, we take care of your elderly," said Heather Baker a special education teacher from Boston who addressed the crowd at Boston's City Hall Plaza. "We need equal rights across the country." Connecticut, which began same sex weddings this past week, and Massachusetts are the only two states that allow gay marriage. Thirty states ban the practice, but a handful allow civil unions or domestic partnerships that grant some rights of marriage.

Protests following the vote on Proposition 8 in California, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman, have sometimes been angry and even violent, and demonstrators have targeted faiths that supported the ban, including the Mormon church.

However, representatives of Join the Impact, which organized Saturday's demonstrations, asked supporters to be respectful and refrain from attacking other groups during the rallies. Seattle blogger Amy Balliett, who started the planning for the protests when she set up a Web page three days after the California vote, said persuasion is impossible without civility.

"If we can move anybody past anger and have a respectful conversation, then you can plant the seed of change," she said.

Balliett said supporters in 300 cities in the U.S. and other countries were holding marches, and she estimated 1 million people would participate, based on responses at the Web sites her group set up. "We need to show the world when one thing happens to one of us, it happens to all of us," she said.

The protests were widely reported to be peaceful, and the mood in Boston was generally upbeat, with attendees dancing to the song "Respect." Signs cast the fight for gay marriage as the new civil rights movement, including one that read "Gay is the new black." But anger over the ban and its backers was evident at the protests.

One sign in Chicago read: "Catholic Fascists Stay Out of Politics."

"I just found out that my state doesn't really think I'm a person," said Rose Aplustill, 21, a Boston University student from Los Osos, Calif., who was one of thousands at the Boston rally.
In San Francisco, demonstrators took shots at some religious groups that supported the ban, including a sign aimed at the Mormon church and its abandoned practice of polygamy that read: "You have three wives; I want one husband."

Chris Norberg, who married his partner in June, also referred to the racial divisions that arose after exit polls found that majorities of blacks and Hispanics supported the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

"They voted against us," Norberg said. Demonstrators in Washington marched from the U.S. Capitol through the city carrying signs and chanting "One, two, three, four, love is what we're fighting for!" A public plaza at the foot of New York's Brooklyn Bridge was packed by a cheering crowd, including people who waved rainbow flags and wore pink buttons that said "I do." Protests were low-key in North Dakota, where people lined a bridge in Fargo carrying signs and flags. Mike Bernard, who was in the crowd at City Hall in Baltimore, said Proposition 8 could end up being a good thing for gay rights advocates. "It was a swift kick in the rear end," he said.

Supporters of traditional marriage said Saturday's rallies may have generated publicity but ultimately made no difference.

"They had everything in the world going for them this year, and they couldn't win," said Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign in California. "I don't think they're going to be any more successful in 2010 or 2012."

In Chicago, Keith Smith, 42, a postal worker, and his partner, Terry Romo, 34, a Wal-Mart store manager, had photos of a commitment ceremony they held, though gay marriage is not legal in Illinois.

"We're not going to wait for no law," Smith said. "But time's going to be on our side and it's going to change."

The Obama Watchers

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON AS SECRETARY OF STATE? CAN WE TRUST HER NOT TO CRY FOR SYMPATHY AS SHE DID IN THE PRIMARIES?

It is to early to say what we can expect from our new President-Elect Barack Obama; however, since he styled himself as the agent of change then we can only surmise that we will see something extremely different. After all, that is what the word "change" means, to alter, to make completely different. Needless to say, with a Democratic House and Senate, "change" should come easy because if having a Democratic Congress can not provide "change" - nothing will.

Our question is the same questions Americans are asking, what is going to change exactly? We hear that Senator Hillary Clinton is being considered as Secretary of State, but what credentials does the honorable Senator bring to the State Department? Hardly the fact that she is married to President Clinton and later served as Senator for New York provide here with the experience to represent American foreign policy.

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico on the other hand is more qualified than Senator Clinton to step into the role of Secretary of State and even then he is not our preferred choice. What change could Senator Clinton bring to the State Department? No doubt administrative change, but the under-secretaries could do this under directive, representing American interests abroad cannot be delegated to a person who during the primary sobbed because "no one liked her."

So what will change look like?

_________________________________________________________

The Obama Transition: What Will Change Look Like?

By KAREN TUMULTY Karen Tumulty – Thu Nov 13, 2:00 pm ET

It is one of the ironies of politics and history that when the candidate of change was pondering what he would do if he actually got elected President, he turned to the man who eight years before handed over the White House keys to George W. Bush. Former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta had met Barack Obama only a few times before the Democratic nominee summoned him to Chicago in August to ask him to begin planning a transition. Podesta supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and had little in common with Obama beyond the fact that they are both skinny guys from Chicago. Yet it is hard to think of a Democrat in Washington who can match Podesta's organizational abilities or his knowledge of the inner workings of government. And Obama was already giving plenty of thought to the crucial 76 days between the election and the Inauguration. "He understood that in order to be successful, he had to be ready," says Podesta, who is now a co-chairman of the transition team. "And he had to be ready fast."

Even in the calmest of times, the transfer of presidential power is a tricky maneuver, especially when it involves one party ceding the office to another. But not since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the midst of the Depression has a new President faced a set of challenges quite as formidable as those that await Obama. That's why Obama has been quicker off the blocks in setting up his government than any of his recent predecessors were, particularly Bill Clinton, who did not announce a single major appointment until mid-December. As the President-elect put it in his first radio address, "We don't have a moment to lose." (See Photos of Obama's Victory Celebration in Chicago)

Not only did Obama name a White House chief of staff two days after the election, but he also began to fill 120,000 sq. ft. (11,000 sq m) of office space in downtown Washington with a transition operation that is ultimately expected to have a staff of 450 and a budget of $12 million, more than half of which must be raised from private funds. Obama's goal, says his old friend Valerie Jarrett, another co-chair of the transition operation, "is to be able to be organized, efficient, disciplined and transparent to the American people." More disciplined than transparent: Washington's quadrennial parlor game is in full swing, with scores of names being circulated as contenders for top jobs in the Obama Administration. But the number of people who actually know anything is small, and they are not prone to leaking.

The transition provides an early glimpse of how the Obama team will conduct itself in power - and a test of how much change it really will bring to Washington. As the cascade of crises grows - the collapse of General Motors being the latest - the President-elect won't have time to settle in before making big decisions. In a real sense, the moves Obama makes in the next six weeks may help define what kind of President he will be. The appointments he makes, the way he engineers his government, how fast he gets everything in place - each of those things will determine whether he stumbles or bursts out of the starting gate and whether he sets forth a clear or an incoherent agenda for governing.

Planning Aheadby all indications, this is shaping up to be one of the most amicable transfers of power between the parties in recent years - thanks in no small part to the extraordinary efforts of the current occupant of the Oval Office. Planning for the handoff was under way well before the Obamas paid a visit to the Bushes at the White House on Nov. 10 for a tour of the place that they, their daughters and the new President's mother-in-law will soon be calling home. Since September, Podesta has been quietly working with current White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and Bolten's deputy, Blake Gottesman, to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible. Bolten and Gottesman have been offering advice on which posts need to be filled quickest and making their personnel available to Obama advisers. More than 100 interim security clearances have already been granted to Obama aides. "If a crisis hits on Jan. 21, they're the ones who are going to have to deal with it," Bolten said in an interview with C-SPAN. "We need to make sure that they're as well prepared as possible."

The most labor-intensive phase is about to begin, as teams of Obama aides descend on more than 100 federal departments and agencies to begin poring over their operations. Meanwhile, the new Administration is looking for more than 300 Cabinet secretaries, deputies and assistant secretaries, plus upwards of 2,500 political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Not that there will be any lack of candidates: in the first five days after Obama's team set up its Change.gov website, 144,000 applications poured in.

Obama seems determined to avoid the mistakes of Bill Clinton's chaotic transition in 1992, which helped set the stage for what turned out to be a rocky first year in office. Whereas Clinton put most of his early efforts into picking a diverse Cabinet that he said would look like America - and required three attempts to come up with a female Attorney General - Obama will initially focus on building his White House operation, much as Ronald Reagan did in 1980. Cabinet appointments are likely to begin coming by the end of the month, which is still early by recent historical standards. But Podesta says Obama intends to make the White House the locus of policy formulation and decision-making.

The strongest signal of how that White House will operate has been Obama's pick of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel to be its chief of staff. Emanuel is a win-at-any-cost partisan but not an ideologue; in his earlier White House stint as a top aide to Clinton, he was a key figure in shepherding through the North American Free Trade Agreement, a crime bill and welfare reform - none of them popular with the Democratic Party's liberal base. The appointment of someone who has been a savvy operator at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue also shows that, for all Obama's talk of change, he does not intend to make the mistake of earlier Presidents who ran as outsiders and brought in top advisers who did not understand the folkways of Washington. (See Photos of How The World Reacted to Obama's Win)
But there are those who worry that Emanuel's hard-edged style - he's famously profane and once sent an enemy a dead fish - will stifle dissent and debate in a White House that, Jarrett says, Obama wants to function using a "team-of-rivals approach, with differences of opinion." Comparing Emanuel with Richard Nixon's ruthless chief of staff, New York University government expert Paul Light predicts, "He's going to make Bob Haldeman look like a cupcake."
The Agenda Dilemmabeyond personnel, the transition period is likely to yield insights into Obama's executive abilities and his agenda. Obama, following a model set by F.D.R. during his transition, has signaled that he does not intend to get deeply involved in the wrangling between Bush and Congress over an economic-stimulus package. Nor does he intend to return to Washington from Chicago to vote on one if it should come to the Senate chamber, where he technically still serves.

But given the urgency of the challenges - guarding against another terrorist attack and dealing with an economic crisis - Obama knows he doesn't have time on his side. His top priority will be stabilizing the financial system, he said in an interview with CNN shortly before the election, followed by investing in renewable energy, universal health care, middle-class tax cuts and education reform. Then there are the other things he talked about at various points in the campaign: closing GuantÁnamo, withdrawing from Iraq, renegotiating trade deals, reforming immigration. How quickly those now secondary goals will follow is a major question and source of debate among Obama's advisers. Publicly, they insist that he can do it all, and there is plenty of talk about putting these issues on parallel tracks. But it is hard to see how he can afford such expensive undertakings alongside a $700 billion federal bailout of the financial system (which Obama now wants to extend to the collapsing auto industry) and a new economic-stimulus package.

One relatively easy way that he can put early points on the change board once in office is by issuing a series of Executive Orders - for instance, reversing Bush policies on stem-cell research, offshore drilling and the prohibition against using foreign-aid money for abortion counseling. Congress, with its stronger Democratic majorities in both houses, is likely to quickly pass legislation that previously died under a Bush veto, beginning with expanded funding for the children's health-insurance program that is administered by the states. And lawmakers may also begin passing parts of Obama's economic and energy plans piecemeal.

The question is whether that will build Obama's momentum for bigger change or merely squander his honeymoon. Here too, Clinton's history is telling. In his first year, he put so much energy and capital into his deficit-reduction package and NAFTA that, in the view of some who served with him, he had little left for health care in his second.

The greatest challenge of all for President Obama will be the one set for him by candidate Obama. A Diageo/Hotline poll conducted after his election showed that two-thirds of those surveyed are now confident that "real change" is coming to Washington. How long are they willing to wait for it? Hope can fuel a campaign, but Presidents are measured by results.

The Obama Watchers

PRESIDENT ELECT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA PROMISED TO BE THE PRESIDENT OF "CHANGE" BUT WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF "CHANGE"?

Webster's Dictionary defines "CHANGE" as the following:

1 a: to make different in some particular :
alter b: to make radically different :
transform c: to give a different position, course, or direction to2 a: to replace with another b: to make a shift from one to another :
switch c: to exchange for an equivalent sum of money (as in smaller denominations or in a foreign currency) d: to undergo a modification of e: to put fresh clothes or covering on intransitive verb1: to become different 2of the moon : to pass from one phase to another3: to shift one's means of conveyance :
transfer 4of the voice : to shift to lower register : break5: to undergo transformation, transition, or substitution 6: to put on different clothes 7: exchange , switch
— chang·er noun
— change hands
: to pass from the possession of one owner to that of another
synonyms change , alter , vary , modify mean to make or become different.
change implies making either an essential difference often amounting to a loss of original identity or a substitution of one thing for another . alter implies a difference in some particular respect without suggesting loss of identity .
vary stresses a breaking away from sameness, duplication, or exact repetition .
modify suggests a difference that limits, restricts, or adapts to a new purpose .

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/CHANGE

We will begin to dissect each definition during the following days in order to understand what "CHANGE" really means.

We, at the Obama Watchers, are a dedicated group that will hold President-Elect Barack Obama accountable for the "change" he wants to bring over the United States. We agree with the concept of "change"; however, their are two types of change:

1. The one Adolf Hitler brought over Germany, that to was change.
2. The one Jesus Christ brought over his people, that was also change.

Both were change.

Which one is President-Elect Barack Obama going to bring over America?

By 2012, we will know.

Time always tells us the truth.

THE OBAMA WATCHERS