Barack Obama wins election for second term as president

Text of Barack Obama’s speech after re-election

President Barack Obama’s speech in Chicago after his re-election Tuesday night, as transcribed by Roll Call:

By The Associated Press

President Barack Obama’s speech in Chicago after his re-election Tuesday night, as transcribed by Roll Call:

—

Thank you so much.

Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.

It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.

Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.

I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that. Whether you pounded the pavement or picked up the phone, whether you held an Obama sign or a Romney sign, you made your voice heard and you made a difference.

I just spoke with Gov. Romney and I congratulated him and Paul Ryan on a hard-fought campaign. We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future. From George to Lenore to their son Mitt, the Romney family has chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the legacy that we honor and applaud tonight. In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Gov. Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.

I want to thank my friend and partner of the last four years, America’s happy warrior, the best vice president anybody could ever hope for, Joe Biden.

And I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the woman who agreed to marry me 20 years ago. Let me say this publicly: Michelle, I have never loved you more. I have never been prouder to watch the rest of America fall in love with you, too, as our nation’s first lady. Sasha and Malia, before our very eyes you’re growing up to become two strong, smart beautiful young women, just like your mom. And I’m so proud of you guys. But I will say that for now one dog’s probably enough.

To the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics. The best. The best ever. Some of you were new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the very beginning. But all of you are family. No matter what you do or where you go from here, you will carry the memory of the history we made together and you will have the lifelong appreciation of a grateful president. Thank you for believing all the way, through every hill, through every valley. You lifted me up the whole way and I will always be grateful for everything that you’ve done and all the incredible work that you put in.

I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly. And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics that tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests. But if you ever get the chance to talk to folks who turned out at our rallies and crowded along a rope line in a high school gym, or saw folks working late in a campaign office in some tiny county far away from home, you’ll discover something else.

You’ll hear the determination in the voice of a young field organizer who’s working his way through college and wants to make sure every child has that same opportunity. You’ll hear the pride in the voice of a volunteer who’s going door to door because her brother was finally hired when the local auto plant added another shift. You’ll hear the deep patriotism in the voice of a military spouse who’s working the phones late at night to make sure that no one who fights for this country ever has to fight for a job or a roof over their head when they come home.

That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.

That won’t change after tonight, and it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers. A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow.

We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet. We want to pass on a country that’s safe and respected and admired around the world, a nation that is defended by the strongest military on earth and the best troops this – this world has ever known. But also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being.

We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag. To the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner. To the furniture worker’s child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president – that’s the future we hope for. That’s the vision we share. That’s where we need to go – forward. That’s where we need to go.

Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always a smooth path. By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won’t end all the gridlock or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward. But that common bond is where we must begin.

Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over. And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you, and you’ve made me a better president. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead.

Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. Reducing our deficit. Reforming our tax code. Fixing our immigration system. Freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We’ve got more work to do.

But that doesn’t mean your work is done. The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

I am hopeful tonight because I’ve seen the spirit at work in America. I’ve seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job. I’ve seen it in the soldiers who reenlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back.

I’ve seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm. And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for health care reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care.

I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father’s story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own. And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That’s who we are. That’s the country I’m so proud to lead as your president.

And tonight, despite all the hardship we’ve been through, despite all the frustrations of Washington, I’ve never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.

I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.

America, I believe we can build on the progress we’ve made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.

And together with your help and God’s grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.

Thank you, America. God bless you. God bless these United States.

http://seattletimes.com/html/politics/2019622154_apusobamatext.html

Barack Obama wins election for second term as president

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/barack-obama-wins-election-second-term-president-041852102–election.html

Obama Wins New Term as Electoral Advantage Holds

Voters returned President Obama to the White House, but he will face a Congress with the same divisions that marked his first term.

What Are They Saying About Obama’s Victory?

http://news.yahoo.com/saying-obamas-victory-

The ‘Beny Sydrome’: How Obession With Big Titles Have Polluted Our Country

Neither Excellency nor Honorable

By Stephen Par Kuol

 

Coming of political age in this titles obsessed South Sudan, you acquire some loud and flattering title within a jiffy.  Once acquired, whether by merits or not, it is worn like a badge of honor. Before you know it, songs are composed to sing your praise in public rallies. South Sudanese are highly skilled in massaging their leaders’ egos.  The leader in question is showered with praises to get the best out of him/her. For worse, South Sudan is a place where leaders take credits for things they have never accomplished with straight face.  For some, it can be initially uncomfortable, but with practice, the poor down to earth person of yesterday is consciously or unconsciously made to believe that he/she is excellent or honorable. For those who cannot fathom the linguistic and social sense of the title, you have to choose between second guessing the title itself and accepting it as a working title. I have done the later to observe the public protocol but in social setting, I always make it a point to my friends and colleagues that there is nothing honorable or excellent about me and we just laugh it off!

In South Sudan, titles make people and you are almost no body without one. For those of us from cattle adoring communities, honorific colors of male cows are common modifiers to polish one’s image. Dead or alive, the legacy of the animal furnishes an eternal identity for the man in the gentleman. Baptismal names also carry one even higher than our African names these days.   In fact, our names are completely turning foreign. Christian and western names like  John Peter Samuel or Mary James have replaced our ancestral names like Deng , Wani or Gatluak.  Beside the academic titles, all government positions are second creations that often come with titles of higher profile.  Of late, we have been informed that the supreme title (“Excellency”) is now reserved only for the chief executives (the President to Governors and the County Commissioners).  Of course, ambassadors are conventionally titled and addressed as Excellencies.  “Honorable” is now reserved for members of parliament and cabinet ministers in South Sudan. Observably, the new protocol has created fresh confusion in term of formal usage just like transitioning from Southern Sudan to South Sudan. Some people are still addressing ministers as Excellencies and I do not blame them. I always go with comrades for all members of my party. I hope that goes down well with the people I have always known as comrades.

Having said all that, it goes without making the point that public political status ought to be honorable and dignified.  The catch in this cultural environment of ours though is that it comes with lot of social and political contradictions.  In real life, these titles also come with untold socio-economic agony only known to those who have once or twice crossed this path.  Even in the era of austerity measures, the unthinkable are expected of the Honorable and the Excellencies. The honorable is not actually honorable until he/she fully delivered the undeliverable. He/she must bring the badly needed infrastructure to the constituency, send children to school, bring funds to feed the unfed, treat the sick, provide shelter for the homeless, you name it, it is his /her responsibility.  Day in, day out, the honorable must settle all these accounts with his/her formal or informal employers (the honorable voters). The honorable receives an average of over 500 calls per hour and must attend to each of them to safe his/her political face. Failure to entertain some of those useful nonsensical on the phone can cost you your good name if not a limb and a leg. In pratice,the job description is quite messy and massive. The Honorable or Excellency is everything from a social worker to political leader and magical breadwinner for the clan and the extended family.   One intimate friend of mine who is also honorable cracked a joke recently that” the only thing you are not blamed for in these positions is what you do with your wife or husband in your own bed room”.  Otherwise, the fault lines are well drawn. The community frames the expectations and you bear the brunt of explaining yourself for all.

In money matters, the Honorable or Excellency does not go broke.  He /she must make the funds available either by legitimate or illegitimate means.   Failure, to meet these unrealistic demands could definitely result in political curses no career politician wants to live with.  That is why not many politicians in South Sudan dare to risk calling the spate of dependency syndrome by its true name. It has thus become a norm among the politicians in our country that political popularity is bought with will and wealth. The rule of thumb is: “perform or perish”. So, no wonder, the almighty graft is still ruling our leaders making these very flashy titles synonymous with the graft itself. In this culture, material corruption is spontaneously revered and glorified in the person of the able leader who generously shares the loots with the extended family. In the absence of racketeering laws, you are not only expected to visibly enrich your good self but also bring the loin share home to the constituency that sent you near the public coffers in the first place. The government work is no body’s business as its core function is to produce material things to be devoured by the strong representatives of the communities. In traditional sense, you brought shame upon the community and the extended family if your sure name appeared with the big 75 late this year, but it is also a failure of the life time not to walk away with a bunch of V8s and state of the art villas in foreign lands.  So, it is damn if you do and damn of you don’t.  Call it catch twenty two if you will!  It is game you can stomach only if you are not guided by your dear conscience. That is why, in my book, these titles will never mean what we think they truly mean until this politics of poverty is defeated like we did to the erstwhile Jellaba.

 My modest and humble experience in our public service has taught me that South Sudan needs a cultural revolution if it is to prove its ill-wishers and prophets of doom wrong. Politically, our beloved homeland needs servant-hood style of leadership, not master-hood.  There is a need for popular culture that defines leadership as an opportunity to serve, not an opportunity to assume autocratic vacuum. Ultimately, we need culture of work to fill the gap between the haves and the haves not. There is a need for a public service system that serves economic and professional interest of the civil servants to build capable technocracy for our public institutions. In my current field of education, the conventional wisdom demands that we heavily invest our petrodollar in technical and skills based education with international currency exchange value to make us globally competitive in the increasingly shrinking world.   In another word, this and the next generation must be trained for self-employment, not pencil- pushing careers where they produce nothing. Only then can we once and for all defeat the prevailing public service mentality which tends to drive all to politics.  Along this direction, the most ideal destiny is: large private sector and small productive public sector managed by few but well paid qualified technocrats whose task is to plan and regulate public bureaucracy. Until then, nothing would be excellent or honorable in this country.

 

The author is the current State Minister of Education in Jonglei State. He is also a freelance writer and visiting lecturer of Criminal Law and Social Sciences at Dr. John Garag Memorial University.

 

 

Sudan oil output seen near 120000 bpd in 2012: IMF

Sudan oil output seen near 120000 bpd in 2012: IMF
AFP
KHARTOUM — Sudan’s oil output, most of which disappeared with the independence of South Sudan, will likely not exceed 120,000 barrels per day this year, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. The South’s separation in July last year left …

South Sudan army vows readiness to pull back from buffer zone

Sudan Tribune
November 7, 2012 (JUBA/KHARTOUM) – South Sudan’s army has pledged to withdraw its forces from the demilitarized buffer zone it has agreed to establish along its tense border with Sudan, following the first sitting of a joint security committee on …

UN Begins Airlift of Stranded South Sudanese from Sudan Capital Voice of America GENEVA — A new operation to airlift nearly 1,400 South Sudanese stranded in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, starts Tuesday. The airlift is organized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) in collaboration…

Mary Sezerina, ‘I Am Condemned to Death, but They Didn’t Say When’ AllAfrica.com Juba — More than 100 prisoners are languishing on death row in South Sudan’s Juba Central Prison, one of three facilities where people sentenced for murder await their fate at the gallows. As the new nation struggles to build a police force and …

IMF: Sudan must further cut fuel subsidies The Associated Press The two countries signed a deal in September to restart South Sudanese oil exports through pipelines that run through Sudan to its Red Sea port. Exports are expected to resume by the end of the year. Sudan’s loss of its main oil-producing territory …

Positive Tribalism: The Case of South Sudan? Sudan Vision These are the feelings of a hurting South Sudanese; who is a witness to the dismembering of his own nascent and delicate nation; the RoSS; via negative tribalism and raw human hate; sustained by human greed and selfishness, for the material life of…

A Teacher and Survivor Happy to Help Her Community in South Sudan AllAfrica.com Gendrassa Refugee Camp — Sanna, a big smile on her face, stepped off the bus after it pulled up at the reception centre in South Sudan’s Gendrassa refugee camp. After six tough months on the run, she was relieved to have made it here. Sanna still … MOI&B Officials Attend Public Management Workshop AllAfrica.com “Since South Sudan is a young country that has just established itself, it was found important that they should adopt a system that will help them to develop faster than they would without the system”, said Nyamunga. He said rolling out the program … South Sudan: Calls to end the death penalty and improve prisons Afrika A statement on 5 November and an accompanying letter to South Sudan’s government, signed by Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and local church and civil society groups, has called for a moratorium on executions, especially as …

Charity set to resume drilling for water in South Sudan Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Just east of the city of Wau, South Sudan, an area that was once largely uninhabited now bustles with activity. Nearly 25,000 people now live in the region, and schools and markets have sprung up. Many nomadic families have been able to stop roaming, …