17 | April | 2013 | The Obama Diary

Stories Of Courage And Hope

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(Military Friends Foundation)

Tasneem Raja: At 5:20 a.m. on Monday, four hours before the Boston Marathon’s elite runners took off, a group of 15 active-duty soldiers from the Massachusetts National Guard gathered at the starting line in Hopkinton. Each soldier was in full combat uniform and carried a “ruck,” a military backpack weighing about 40 pounds. The rucks were filled with Camelbacks of water, extra uniforms, Gatorade, changes of socks—and first-aid and trauma kits. It was all just supposed to be symbolic. These soldiers, participating in “Tough Ruck 2013,” were doing the 26 miles of the Boston Marathon to honor comrades killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or lost to suicide and PTSD-related accidents after coming home.

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(Military Friends Foundation)

When the explosion went off, Fiola and his group immediately went into tactical mode. “I did a count and told the younger soldiers to stay put,” Fiola says. “Myself and two other soldiers, my top two guys in my normal unit, crossed the street about 100 yards to the metal scaffoldings holding up the row of flags. We just absolutely annihilated the fence and pulled it back so we could see the victims underneath. The doctors and nurses from the medical tent were on the scene in under a minute. We were pulling burning debris off of people so that the medical personnel could get to them and begin triage.”

Read more here

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CTV Atlantic: Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter announced today that the provincial government will donate $50,000 to the Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in response to the bombings at the Boston Marathon.

“When we were in need, Bostonians were there,” says Dexter. “There is a border and hundreds of miles between us, but Massachusetts is always close to the hearts of Nova Scotians. We will do everything we can to support our neighbours and friends in their time of need.”

Read more here

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News Of The Day

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Washington Post: Months after their Jan. 28 announcement of a tentative compromise on immigration reform, the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” has finally unveiled its bill, or at least a summary of the proposal. It includes sweeping changes in treatment of both existing undocumented workers and aspiring immigrants. Here are the key points, culled from summaries in the Post and Politico as well as the actual bill summary, posted by Talking Points Memo here.

Read more on the Senate Immigration Bill

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Even more news on the Senate’s immigration bill, Gun control vote, Budget, Reinhart and Rogoff’s failed pro-austerity economic study, the IMF’s warning against excessive fiscal austerity, etc; in the Washington Post’s WonkBlog

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Steve Benen: For reasons that have never been clear, House Republican leaders gave Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) a seat on the House Intelligence Committee, affording the right-wing lawmaker access to some of the nation’s most sensitive national security information, and giving the congresswoman an opportunity to ask questions of the intelligence community.

Occasionally, that’s not a good idea. Late last week, Bachmann asked CIA Director John Brennan questions that left him visibly confused. As part of a line of inquiry that apparently related to Benghazi, the Minnesota Republican asked about armed drone strikes in Libya before last September.”Armed drone strikes in Libya?” Brennan replied, clearly baffled. “I’m unknowing of such.” There is a moral to the story. It’s unfortunate that ridiculous candidates will be elected to Congress, but to give these lawmakers seats on the intelligence committees is never a good idea.

Read more here

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Zack Beauchamp: Tuesday afternoon, Mike Konczal transformed the debate over austerity and growth by reporting new study finding that a paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that served as one of the principal intellectual justification for austerity turns out to be have been fatally flawed. Its conclusions, for example, were based in part on an elementary Excel coding error (Reinhart and Rogoff, for their part, aren’t conceding the game)

But let’s be honest: most journalists had no real way of knowing whether or not Reinhart/Rogoff had actually provided *good* proof of the 90 percent theory. The reason economists tend to have PhDs is that economics is a difficult, technical profession; assessing the robustness of any individual finding requires a degree of econometric expertise, background knowledge, and free time that the vast majority of journalists simply don’t have. This a deeper problem for journalists than many will care to admit.

Read more here

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ThinkProgress: A bipartisan group of senators this morning introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation that provides a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, as well as reforms to other existing worker and visa programs. Still, temporary status gives those immigrants the ability to contribute directly to the American economy, and the benefits for the overall economy, including American workers, would be substantial over the next decade.

Legislation that included a faster path to citizenship, as CAP’s Patrick Oakford and Robert Lynch found in a recent study, would provide an even bigger boost to the economy. A five-year path to citizenship, they found, would add $1.1 trillion to the economy over the next decade while increasing Americans’ cumulative income by $618 billion and increasing job growth by 159,000 annually.

Read more here

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Presidential Daily Schedule (All Times Eastern)

10:00AM: Pres. Obama receives the presidential daily briefing

11:45AM: Press Sec. Jay Carney briefs the press

12:00PM: Pres. Obama and VP Biden meet with Treasury Sec. Jack Lew

2:00PM: First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a bill signing for military families with Gov. O’Malley

2:45PM: VP Biden hosts a Google+ Hangout with Mayors to discuss reducing gun violence

4:05PM: Pres. Obama and VP Biden welcome the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride to the White House

6:30PM: Pres. Obama meets with Democratic Senators for dinner

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Patton Oswalt: Boston. F*cking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

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MooOOOOoooorning everyone. Wishing you all a safe and happy day. 😀

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