****
****
President Barack Obama speaks during his visit to Valencia College in Orlando, Florida
President Barack Obama talks to Valencia College student Carolyn Verno after she introduced him
President Barack Obama is greeted upon his arrival at the Orlando International Airport in Orlando, Florida
President Barack Obama announces new U.S. sanctions on the Russian economy following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula
****
****
The Obama Diary 
Yesss…
Congrats amk on #1!
Wooot! Wooot!
Male Caucasian patient had recurring pain for 10 years but as a junk yard operator, insurance was out of his reach, too expensive, didn’t offer comprehensive coverage, so he just coped with the pain for 10 years!!!!
The doctors then asked him why he came in now at this time and he said, because of ObamaCare. He said, finally he could get comprehensive and affordable coverage because of ObamaCare.
About time too, because his twin is growing inside him. An absorbed twin.
This is his 2nd visit to florida in as many weeks, isn’t it? What gives? targeting the that thief of a govnor?
Lots of wealthy donors ‘wintering’ there 🙂
Good point Bob. Hadn’t thought of that at all!
“Here’s a fun George Washington fact your teachers likely skipped: According to historians at Mount Vernon, the first American president oversaw the production of 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey at his home distillery each year, which he bottled and sold. Even lesser-known is his affection for peach brandy. The same site produced about 60 gallons a year, which Washington mostly poured for guests at the Alexandria estate. Now, for the first time in more than two centuries, you can sip a similar sweet spirit.
The George Washington Distillery, a reconstructed version of the circa-1797 original, announced it has produced 400 bottles of a similar brandy using 18th-century techniques. The project began in 2010 when staff from several distilleries, including Virginia producers Catoctin Creek Distilling Company and A. Smith Bowman Distillery, gathered to advise on the project. The brandy was then double-distilled in copper pot stills powered by wood fires, and aged for more than two years in toasted oak barrels. History buffs can get a taste come April 1, when purchase vouchers will be distributed starting at 8 AM at Mount Vernon’s Gristmill Shop (actual sales start at 10). The 375-milliliter bottles cost $150 and are limited to one per customer.”
LIVE NOW | President Obama’s Departure From MIA: http://miami.cbslocal.com/live-video/
Thanks JER. I have never watched this until tonight, it was riveting. I still feel mesmerized, actually! Thank you again, now I know to be on the lookout! 😉
Thanks a gazillion Nerdy!
I’ve had an unconstructive day – dropped my laptop on the floor …. it doesn’t work any more 😦
UGH!!!!! Do hope you have everything on a backup drive, Chips.
Um ….. no, Bob. 😳 But I think I’m okay, I’ve only had it a few months and still hadn’t transferred everything from my old laptop. And still haven’t transferred everything from my old broken down desktop to my newish desktop. I HATE ‘PUTERS!
Yikes!!! Chips, you really should set up an account with Backblaze – it’s an effortless, always on, online, inexpensive backup of your computer(s) – http://www.backblaze.com/
I’ve had an account with them for quite sometime. Fortunately, I’ve never had to rebuild a system but lots of folk have and are very thankful for how easy the process has been for them to do so.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/backup/fl/backblaze-review.htm
I *definitely* need to check that out Bob, thanks a million! I hadn’t even signed up for that iCloud thingie with Mac, which was drastically dumb, but when I get his sorted I will …. I hope….. have learnt my lesson!
The combination I use is Backblaze for off-site, highly reliable 24×7 system backup and a Mac AirPort Time Capsule as both my local area wireless network and local systems backup. http://www.apple.com/airport-time-capsule/ As close to effortless + peace of mind redundant, geo-dispersed backup as you can get.
What a coincidence. That’s the prayer I said first thing this morning. Dear God, Today please give me as close to effortless + peace-of-mind redundant, geo-dispersed backup as I can get. Amen.
You should always have multiple backups, “just in case.” I have a couple of USB thumb drives, which are fairly cheap, and use them to back up any critical files. Of course, I also have a couple of external drives that I back everything else up to. 😉 The last time my hard drive crashed, the longest part was waiting for the new drive to arrive. The install (I decided to go ahead and upgrade the OS while I was at it) and recovery from that point was over in a few hours.
Does this
and blames the ‘puter.
/smh
That’s me, in both pics, apart from the blonde hair.
Let’s not split hairs about your hair.
If it makes you feel better my Plasma TV stopped working today……..power won’t turn on. I push the on button and it immediately powers off. Think the tube went sayonara 😥
Oh {{{{{Chipsticks}}}}}
Well done amk!!!
Great selection of photos, NW. Thank you.
If you have a moment, please do thank EU Commission President Barroso – Friday’s agreement between the EU and Ukraine is no small matter.
#TrustBarack
Wonderful. Also spotted the “kleptocracy”!
😉
Our friend James can plan on waiting a long, long time…
I guess Rand Paul think that he can win the youth vote by running around the country talking about the NSA. I hope these young folks look beyond his NSA speeches and look at his record of support for young people in congress.
Honestly, I don’t think most young people care about NSA as much as these Libertarians think. Young people are all over Twitter, FB, and other social media sites revealing damn near every living minute of their waking lives. They own smart phones, and are downloading apps by the minute – apps that track their data and location at any given minute.
So I wish Rand Paul the best of luck – because he’s not going to get far with this NSA crap.
Truth!
This pretty much sums it up!
Brave puppy! I would not be so calm standing there…
jacquelineoboomer, That fact does not concern the Republicans, they love to send them to war, but don’t give a dam about them when they come home all messed up mentally and physically, needing the help and support of the country they fought for.
So true, anniebella. I’ve never seen anything like the callousness of this current crop of Republicans, in my life. Except for other times we’ve seen it!
I can honestly say, I don’t know of one Republican politician that I respect.
Ain’t love grand. 😆
LOVE……has no boundaries.
An elderly couple had just learned how to send text messages on their cell
phones. The wife was a romantic type and the husband was more of a
no-nonsense guy.
One afternoon the wife went out to meet a friend for coffee. She decided
to… send her husband a romantic text message and she wrote:
“If you are sleeping, send me your dreams. If you are laughing, send me
your smile. If you are eating, send me a bite. If you are drinking, send me
a sip. If you are crying, send me your tears. I love you.”
The husband texted back to her:
“I’m on the toilet. Please advise.”
😀 😀 😀 😀
I must confess I didn’t read the linked article … I just cracked up at the picture!
President Obama is killing it……….. out of 11 million + brackets he’s picked 11/12 correctly…… 99.6%
I was hoping POTUS was going to win that billion, so he could pay down some of the debt, and Michelle could get some more shoes. 🙂
And they could take more vacations. 🙂
🙂
Of course, he would have to give it to charity, or to help support young athletes in school. The haters would never allow him to keep it. Never.
Like with his Nobel Peace Prize award money.
Now does that make any darn sense. Hold it just a minute, let me correct myself, now does that make any dam sense?
No, it doesn’t!
Hey Mrs. O’Boomer. This is shameful. And they have the nerve to called some people lazy. It would nice is Favreau’s video went viral. He is such a nice young man and did not hesitate to call out Faux news for their lying and cynicism.
I, too, loved everything about Favreau’s video. What a sweetheart. He gets it!
Wish he’d come hang with us!
bbl …. time to prepare some dinner …
Thanks, Bobfr!
Great, great tweet, JOB! Thank you for sharing it with us. Great thanks to William McDavid for tweeting it.
Thanks, nath. I agree – it was quite poignant!
Scandal is f**ked up! So bad and so good.
This, youngsters, was real dancing.
And remember in her biography, Ginger Rogers reminded us that she did everything Fred did, but backwards and wearing high heels!! 🙂
Never mind. You been listening too much to Texas guv. 😀
Check this out. It’s not Ginger Rogers as labeled – still the woman is 75. I couldn’t move like that on my best day when I was 25!
That ol’ Lady is hawt!. 🙂
My favorite Fred Astaire scene: his last scene in “On the Beach”, the nuclear war picture. Both funny and heart-rending.
Yup.
Tonight’s episode of Scandal will tear your heart out and rip you to pieces.
There is not enough wine in the world to drown your sorrows.
Shonda Rhimes knows her stuff. She can wring anger, sadness, rage, fury, confusion, love, joy, ecstasy, all in the space of an hour. A fantastic show. Fantastic actors. Fantastic acting.
I will binge watch the seasons one day when I’m on vacation later this year. I simply have not been watching – but I’m obviously missing something good.
THIS.
Joe Morton is showing everyone what an acting dynamo he is.
Joe Morton is freaking amazing!
Just spent the last 2 hours (yes I was rewinding some parts) listening to Mr. Jon Favreau speech and Q & A;
session was very thoughtful, respectful and informative – very talented gentleman who clearly loves PBO (even now referring to PBO as “my boss”);
I was just concerned about the part of the speech where he says he drove through the toll the 2004 election because he was too broke;
In a few years if he decides to run for public office, I don’t want the right wingers to bring this up like they did with young PBO’s meals in Indonesia and all his elementary school stuff;
so I decided to send Mr Favs a quick reminder to “clear this up” – hope he doesn’t mind some ribbing from a supporter;
😆
What the hell was that between Quinn and Huck?!
Yuck!!!
Time for the naughty mat….
Laura Rozen wants to let us know on Twitter that she doesn’t care for #Scandal. Tell Laura if she’s not trolling the President, she’s trolling someone else. That’s all she’s been doing all damn day, all week long. Today she tried to get attention by tweeting in “poetry.”… //SMDH
HF, nice for us, who don’t tweet, that you left her out there to flounder in the twitter badlands, all on her own sorry stupid self. Where she belongs!!
Wish people would just not follow the Obama haters that way they would be isolated.
Interesting tidbit —–the first Obama fundraiser in Miami tonight was at the home of Gloria Estefan’s niece and her husband, both registered Republicans. huh. 2nd fundraiser was at the home of Alonzo Mourning, likely not a registered Republican. (PBO said he always admired his “warrior heart”)
Green shirt (with pink flowers) and laptop computer – are these my failings? Okay, very well then.
oh, yikes, hf, he’s got a point! (me in gray shirt, with muted tv to my right. dang.)
Slipping away here, goodnight TOD. Thank you. Has AF1 landed safely? http://www.gratefulness.org/candles/candles.cfm?l=eng&gi=PBO
Wow. Actual information from Knoller. Must have heard about it on Twitter.
jeesh. with this sentence structure, this guy’s a journalist?
He’s given up good sentence structure, for Twitter. Or Lent.
Is he on FLOTUS’ trip?
and cory booker inserts himself back into the dialogue after a long boycott of all things Obama, to tell us he was a strapping athlete back in the day…
Felt the same way, but thought I’d post the tweet without comment! I haven’t quite figured out where he’ll end up, but I was at least glad for the first (get covered) part!
LIVE NOW: Air Force One arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland – http://www.cbsnews.com/liveFeed/widget.shtml
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
And Marine One has lifted off. So glad he’s back at home!
FLOTUS, Mrs. Robinson, Malia, Sasha, and Peng Liyuan this morning in Beijing
Thanks for the photos. I love traveling with the Obama ladies.
Sure thing, CEB. This is all I can find on Chinese social media, so some are not as high quality as I would like….. it will be easier to get glossy pics in the morning/afternoon.
Conservative freak out this morning about FLOTUS not taking press with her to China, and not doing it right…wah, wah, wah…
Whatever she would have done would facilitate a freak out, so I’m glad that she’s doing it her way.
Lovely to see FLOTUS, especially with kids.
Right wing haters was already criticizing the trip to China. What’s new? Regardless what the Obamas do they will fine some way to criticize it because they hate this black family in their White House.
This pic is viral on Weibo right now…..from when FLOTUS visited the Chinese satellite school in D.C. last week. Look at the two boys in the corner 🙂
That’s almost as cute as the photo where the little boy in the back row was kissing the little girl!
How bad am I?
Good one!
Thanks to the master of the tweets. 😉
I wish! 🙂
Your comebacks are great!
Only when I’m inspired (thanks!).
Saw this tweet from Jon Favreau:
First for paragraphs from the linked article:
“Is kindness the missing piece of your brand—the ingredient that can allow your organization to stand out in an age in which consumers long to be treated as more than a nuisance?
Lloyd H. Dean, president and CEO of Dignity Health, one of the nation’s five largest healthcare providers, tells a story about a member of Dignity’s housekeeping staff, who in the course of cleaning a breast-cancer patient’s room took the time to listen and share her own personal experiences and encouragement. Later, the patient wrote to say, “The clinical care was excellent … but it was the housekeeper who saved my life. She gave me hope.”
Dean draws a conclusion: “Compassion and kindness aren’t expensive,” he says. “But the yield is priceless.”
A few weeks ago, Dean shared the stage with the Dalai Lama at Santa Clara University, where they led a session on the advantages that come from a compassionate business model. The event represented an important bridge between entrepreneurship and ethics, co-sponsored by Santa Clara’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, named after Apple co-founder Mike Markkula, and the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.”
More at the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/03/19/the-power-of-compassion-to-drive-your-bottom-line/
I had listened to his University College, Dublin presentation and Q&A and had been thinking about his aspirations and his deep awareness of the devastation that cynicism infuses into society during the past few hours. Then I saw the above referenced tweet and article.
Upon further reflection, it seemed only natural to suggest to him that he consider a script that incorporated the essence of all that First Lady Obama and Neil Dyson strive to have humanity understand. The power of tightly coupling science and compassion is enormous and entirely under utilized. So ….
Yes We Can
good night
Before departing, had to edit one sentence …
‘I had listened to his University College, Dublin presentation and Q&A and had been thinking about, during the past few hours, his aspirations and his deep awareness of the devastation that cynicism infuses into society.’
definitely need some rest ….
One more item before departing ….
“The parallels to Ukraine’s past are obvious. What is less obvious is the opportunity that the newly enacted values and enunciated paradigms may provide for Ukraine’s future development. For most Western European countries, where a purely individualist paradigm became popularized during the Enlightenment, and where a hierarchical system of social organization had existed for centuries, industrialization and modernization (including the establishment of liberal democracy in the political sphere, and a stable stratification system in the economic sphere) developed as natural processes. In Ukraine, industrialization was imposed by Stalin by force, and most Ukrainian analysts have traditionally seen the resulting modernity as somehow “incomplete” or “skewed”. This may have been true for the past 2 decades (or more), but the Maidan may have given us a new perspective. Perhaps the “beacon on the hilltop” of the future will be in Kyiv – a place that offers the world a new civilizational principle of “spravedlyvist” (natural justice) and “hidnist” (individually realized / collectively recognized – dignity). Or maybe I’m being too optimistic…”
Well worth reading and pondering ….
now, I must stop for a few hours ….
so @AP BREAKING: Putin says Russia will not retaliate further to US sanctions.
Moooooorning Early Birds!
http://theobamadiary.com/2014/03/21/early-bird-chat-187/