‘an obama insider, running the race from afar’

President Barack Obama meets with Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina in Messina’s West Wing office at the White House, Dec. 4, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Jeff Zeleny (NYT): …Jim Messina, previously a White House deputy chief of staff, is running the president’s re-election campaign, which will formally open its doors in a Chicago high-rise this week and file the paperwork necessary for Mr. Obama to begin accepting campaign contributions.

…“I really believe that the president is the art and I am the science,” Mr. Messina said. “You have to start out with the assumption that this will not be 2008 again.”

…Since leaving the White House two months ago, Mr. Messina has been on a listening tour, visiting donors and activists in nearly two dozen cities. The private sessions were intended to improve frayed relations, particularly with some liberal groups, while reconnecting with supporters.

…Messina is the most influential person in the president’s inner circle whom many people have never heard of … Four years ago, he left the office of Senator Max Baucus of Montana to join the Obama campaign as a national chief of staff. After the election he became a deputy to Rahm Emanuel, the first White House chief of staff, and the president began relying on him for legislative strategy, political advice and football talk.

“Some people go to meetings so they can hear the sound of their voice,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview in Chicago, where he is now the mayor-elect. “Jim goes to a meeting to come up with solutions to problems.”

Full article here

forty-foooooooooooooooore!

President Barack Obama leaves the White House on April 3. The President was headed to the golf course.

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I was sooooo hoping the President would play golf this weekend, just as a….

…. to the wingnuts.

Love the way he just ignores these idiots!

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(An earlier post on this very topic here)

‘is it better to save no one?’

A protester holds a banner beneath a Kingdom of Libya flag during an anti-Gaddafi demonstration in Benghazi, March 31

Nicholas Kristof (New York Times): Critics from left and right are jumping all over President Obama for his Libyan intervention, arguing that we don’t have an exit plan, that he hasn’t articulated a grand strategy, that our objectives are fuzzy, that Islamists could gain strength. And those critics are all right.

But let’s back up a moment and recognize a larger point: Mr. Obama and other world leaders did something truly extraordinary, wonderful and rare: they ordered a humanitarian intervention that saved thousands of lives and that even Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s closest aides seem to think will lead to his ouster.

We were all moved by Eman al-Obeidy, the woman who burst into the reporters’ hotel in Tripoli with her story of gang-rape and torture, only to be dragged away by security goons. If we had not intervened in Libya, Qaddafi forces would have reached Benghazi and there might have been thousands of Eman al-Obeidys.

Eman al-Obeidy

It has been exceptionally rare for major powers to intervene militarily for predominantly humanitarian reasons…. We are inconsistent. There’s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions. But just because we allowed Rwandans or Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be massacred as well? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?

….The difficulties of Iraq and Afghanistan have again made many Americans – particularly on the left – allergic to any use of military force, even to save lives in a limited operation with very few civilian casualties, like the one in Libya.

…The International Criminal Court is investigating Colonel Qaddafi, with an indictment possible as soon as next month. It would be a fine step toward ending global impunity for atrocities if a SWAT team of Libyans and coalition forces swooped down one day and seized Colonel Qaddafi to face trial in The Hague. It’s the kind of thing that no one can predict, but it’s an ending that would leave this Libyan incursion remembered not only for the lives it saved, but also as a milestone in the history of humanitarianism.

Full article here

Thank you Dorothy and BWD (see here) for highlighting this article

brazil

Music: Nocturne by Secret Garden

yes, we can. again

See BWD’s new post here at The Only Adult In The Room – get your thinking caps on!

morning comrades!

😆