2010 …. january to february …. picture perfect

Music by Fredrika Stahl

another good day’s work

President Obama talks with Sen. Chris Dodd and other guests before signing the “CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010,” (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act) in the Oval Office, Dec. 20. (Photo by Pete Souza)

Lynn Rosenthal (White House Advisor on Violence Against Women): This afternoon, I stood in the Oval Office and watched as President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) which includes the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA.)  As he signed this crucial bill into law, the President was surrounded by Senators and Representatives, both Democrats and Republicans, and national advocates who work every day to end domestic violence and child abuse.

In 2008, 772,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect.  Nearly 2,000 of those children died. By providing states and local communities with new tools to identify and treat abuse and neglect, CAPTA-funded services will continue to protect children across the country…..

….Thanks to the bi-partisan work of members of Congress who were with us today, CAPTA and FVPSA will help end abuse, give hope to victims, and provide families with the help they need, when they need it. As we gathered in the Oval Office, I was thinking of the many abuse survivors I have met over the year. This bill creates a bright future for victims and their families.

he’s a very forgiving man, this president

Thank you for the link Hachikō

Tally’s response (see comments):

“People always think they’re taking the higher ground… then they look ahead and see Obama is already standing on it.”

** President Obama will sign the repeal of DADT on Wednesday at 9:15 a.m. during a ceremony at the Interior Dept **

a day of service

i’m grateful

Spotted by The Only Adult In The Room, inspired by The Only Adult In The Room

cnn poll: ‘obama rebounding’

Politico: President Barack Obama may be staging a comeback in the eyes of the American people, a new poll suggests.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday, 48 percent of Americans say they approve of how Obama is handling his job (Note: the President’s approval rating in CNN’s late September poll was 42%)

The disapproval number (48) is the lowest it’s been since May … his disapproval rating reached as high as 54 percent in September …

The president also received more support for his policies in the poll than at any other time since mid-2009. Fifty-five percent of Americans said the country would be headed in the right direction under policies proposed by Obama … (11 points higher than the 44 percent who say the policies of congressional Republican leaders will move the country in the right direction)…

(75% approve of the President’s tax cuts deal)

‘why right and left won’t cheer obama’

CNN/P.M. Carpenter: ….once the reality of Obama’s extraordinary success within a mere half-term is noted — a stimulus package that prevented the Great Depression II; health care reform that achieves the decades-long goal of near universality; financial reform that reimposes some grown-up supervision of Wall Street gamblers — a bit of culling must be done when confronting American opinion on all this. Opinion that seems to be running downhill.

….The pseudoconservatives’ perception is that Obama’s success is a sprinting, despotic socialism enforced by jackbooted bureaucrats of anti-constitutional intensity. Most of this opinion, it seems to me, reflects a pathological loathing of Obama’s very success and a nostalgic, all-power-should-be-ours longing for the actual despotism of George W. Bush’s “unitary executive” humbug.

….On opposite ground, today’s progressive activists (known in some unmentioned circles as the “professional left”) perceive Obama’s success as a tragic, alienating failure simply because that success has been less than 100 percent. Their ideological purity is a brutal taskmaster; it accepts no compromise with political realities.

It wants and demands a society approaching Utopia — and that Utopia lies, it seems, only inches away from a snarling, presidential ideologue. They’ll deny that, but their own snarling, in my mind, tends to outweigh their pleas of innocence.

Case in point: A nearly $900 billion tax compromise, of which more than $700 billion is geared to middle-class and unemployment relief, is excoriated by activist progressives as an insufferable Obamian sellout.

As for traditional liberalism’s rank and file? They have few problems with President Obama; the base holds — according to pollsters about three-fourths of it — understanding that America’s utopian future still likely remains at least a few years down the road…

Full article here

take your time congress, no rush…

USA Today: In Hawaii, they’re waiting for the president. First lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha, and dog Bo arrived at the beach community of Kailua over the weekend, but President Obama is still in Washington waiting for the lame duck Congress to war up its pre-Christmas work.

“I’m very excited,” said Virginia Carnohan, owner of The Cottage gift shop about 2 1/2 miles from where the Obama family and friends will spend Christmas and New Year’s. “We have a local boy who’s president and everybody’s very proud of that,” said Chuck Prentiss, chairman of the Kailua Neighborhood Board…..

mishmash alert!

Check out the latest ‘Mishmash‘ at The Only Adult In The Room – pretty darn excellent

“a president who gets shit done”

Andrew Sullivan: (Extracts) I think of Frank Rich and Paul Krugman as brilliant men, but profoundly resistant to the core rationale of the Obama presidency (and the underlying dynamic of its accumulating success)…..

Now, there’s little doubt that in contrast to recent decades, Obama has nudged the direction leftward … but throughout he has tried, as his partisan critics have complained, not to be a partisan president, to recall, as he put it in that recent press conference, that this is a diverse country, that is is time we had a president who does not repel or disparage or ignore those who voted against him or those who have grown to despise him.

…. he seems to understand that persistence and steadiness are better tools in this than grand statements, sudden moves or grandstanding attempts to please his own base. He really is trying to be what he promised: president of the red states as well as the blue states. And a president who gets shit done.

The results after two years: universal health insurance, the rescue of Detroit, the avoidance of a Second Great Depression … (see article for full dazzling list of achievements!)

If the next two years are as productive as the last two, and if Obama resists the Rich-Krugman-Maddow chorus to be Michael Moore in chief, then the promise of the Goodbye To All That presidency is very much alive …  Obama is looking good because he kept his nerve and retained his restraint. That’s a tough combo: nerve and restraint. It takes a cold-bloodedness to pull this off, and there are times when ice seems to run through the man’s veins.

I occasionally used to day-dream about a ‘one-nation’ Tory U.S. president, a second Eisenhower of a sort. Little did I know he would be a black man with a funny name.

Read the complete brilliant article here