Archive for March 3rd, 2011
Nathan Allen, the man who received the letter from the President, has posted a comment under this post – thank you Nathan.
PNJ: Writing the president a letter is like writing to Santa Claus — you really don’t expect to get a response.
Nathan Allen, 26, of Pensacola wrote a letter last year to President Barack Obama to apologize for a sign he held up in front of Obama’s motorcade as it drove into Pensacola on June 14. The president was in town to get a firsthand look at how the BP oil spill was affecting the area. The sign read: “Mr. President, Why did you wait so long?”
Allen said he didn’t think President Obama would reply to the letter …. he received the surprise of a lifetime when he opened his mailbox about four weeks ago. Inside was an envelope from the White House that held a handwritten note from the president.
“I have to say that I have seen signs a lot worse, and part of my job is to take criticism,” Obama wrote.
….Allen said several months after he made the sign, he was reading Acts 23:1-5. He said the passages led him to believe he did the wrong thing by holding up the sign. Part of the passage reads: “You shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people.”
“Right when I read that, it kind of went straight to my heart,” Allen said. “I was like, ‘Shoot, I guess that’s kind of what I did.’ Yes, I have got freedom of speech, but as a Christian I need to be respecting the leader of my people.” Allen said he prayed, and he knew the only thing he could do to make things right was to write Obama.
“I just … told him I will be praying for him instead of holding signs on the side of the road from this point forward,” Allen said.
Full article here here
‘they’re bussing in palm trees!’
😆
NYT: When Rahm Emanuel was White House chief of staff, the decision about what President Obama would say in the short address he delivers via radio and the Internet each Saturday changed so often that speechwriters would wait until Friday to write.
But since William M. Daley took over two months ago and David Plouffe succeeded David Axelrod as communications chief, the decision is made early — and it sticks.
The new team Mr. Obama has assembled to run the White House is just starting to make its mark. But together Mr. Daley and Mr. Plouffe are bringing a new order and a different management style for different times, say people within the West Wing and others who deal with them. The White House is more disciplined and less personality driven, more focused on long-term strategic goals and less consumed by the daily messaging skirmishes with Republicans…
Unlike Mr. Emanuel, the idea-a-minute dynamo who would dart from floor to floor trying to control matters mundane and major, Mr. Daley, a seasoned former executive and commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, has streamlined the operation and is more likely to keep to his office, door closed, and to delegate to subordinates….
…Mr. Plouffe likewise is less available to reporters and party officials and keeps his office television turned off — to tune out the daily distractions of cable TV’s political play by play …. Plouffe … is a stoic, by-the-numbers master of organization….
Full article here
…Buddy what’s-his-name has declared for 2012
CBS: Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer has announced that he is forming an exploratory committee for a possible 2012 presidential run…
The one-term governor, who switched from the Democratic party to the GOP midway through his term in 1991, has been largely inactive in politics since his gubernatorial re-election defeat in the early 1990s. (He also launched a failed gubernatorial campaign in 1995.) Still, he says, “I’d love to be president.”
“I would settle for somebody better than me, but I haven’t seen them out there.”
political football? no thanks
First lady Michelle Obama reads “The Cat in the Hat” with Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala and schoolchildren at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, DC on March 3
virginia cavalier
Public Policy Polling: Virginia seems like a state Republicans almost have to win next year if they want to take back the White House but if the voting was today Barack Obama would take it again by a margin comparable to or greater than what he won in 2008.
Obama leads Mitt Romney by 6 points in the state at 48-42. That’s identical to the size of his victory over John McCain in 2008. After that his leads increase to 8 points over Mike Huckabee at 51-43, 12 over Newt Gingrich at 51-39, and a whooping 19 over Sarah Palin at 54-35.
More here
The Obama Diary 
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