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President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial park cenotaph in Hiroshima
President Barack Obama speaks with 91-year-old Sunao Tsuboi, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe listens during a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
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"We are not bound ... to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose." —@POTUS speaks at Hiroshima. snpy.tv/1TMHmsa
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 27, 2016****
President Barack Obama embraces atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori
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Japanese and foreign Journalists watch President Barack Obama’s live address from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
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Huge line of Japanese right now at Hiroshima memorial, waiting to take photos with the wreath Obama laid https://t.co/4njCgQ21th
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Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) May 27, 2016****
The Obama Diary 
Obama!! All over the world he engenders love and respect
And he’ll be home soon!
Thanks, NW, for this wonderful record of his trip, start to finish.
Thanks, Ms. J’OB!
Congrats Judith!
Thank you Nerdy!
Thanks, Dudette!
🙂
That’s right Judith…doing us proud wherever he dares to go..whatever he dares to do… OUR President! 🙂
Judith!!! Congrats on First 🙂
⭐🌟🌠
Congrats Judith and you coming first. Whoopee!!!!.
Thank you again Nerdy for feasting our eyes on this historical trip to Japan with our POTUS. Watched his speech earlier, he is a class act unto himself. I love this man to pieces.
🙂
Congrats Judith!!
NW …. these are spectacularly overwhelming photos …. thank you …..
🙂
Recommitting to do everything I can to preserve President Obama’s legacy by electing Democrats up and down the ticket. No rest; no regrets!
^5 to that. Fist bump too. 🙂
Best President Ever!
AMEN TO THAT!
Consensus!
THEY BROKE THE MOLD..I LOVE THIS PRESIDENT!
Hey, GGail, per your request, this one’s for you. 🙂
NW, I ❤ U
I just hollar'd when I read this – it it PRICELESS!!!!
I LOVE IT!!!! …………AND THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH……………..COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU!
Preach!! This needs to be a retweeted a million times.
The high price of ignorance
IGNORANCE IS AS RAMPANT AS DRUGS IN THIS COUNTRY…EITHER…EITHER..OR…WILL END UP IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL WITH THE REST OF THE TRASH!
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.”
good grief that is really scary thinking.
I wish every student in every school had a principal like Alisha Coleman-Kiner.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/principal-flawlessly-slams-racist-busy-body-who-didnt-want-child-to-receive-his-murdered-mothers-diploma/
The Honorable Barack Obama. Indeed.
Miss NerdyW – HUGE thanks! You done good! 😀 😀
ps: If I cannot find a small white Japanese shovel, how about I try to arrange a “Hiroshima hug” from POTUS as your travel keepsake?
I DON’T THINK ANY OF US WILL EVER FORGET THE PRESIDENTIAL GRACE THAT HOVERED OVER THE ASHES OF HIROSHIMA TODAY……….THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WORDS!
You are so right, Sue. I am so riveted by these photos and the embrace felt around the world!
Sue, Pf, there’s no president who could have done this with the same impact as PBO. He’s spent almost eight years building trust and credibility around the world. People know he’s real and does things from his heart because they’re right, not because they’re politically expedient. It had to be someone with extraordinary sensitivity and compassion to could step up and heal the wound that is Hiroshima. Only Barack H. Obama could do that..
You are so right….
from his acceptance speech of the Peace Prize …to his speech in Cairo….to his speech in Israel…the themes have been the same…
Since I didn’t know anyone who was graduating from the Santa Fe Indian School, I wasn’t able to wrangle a ticket to see the First Lady yesterday. I do have a friend who was able to attend and he said that her speech was so very emotional, not only for everyone there, but for the First Lady as well. He said he cried.
There were a few “protesters” with a sign asking for the release of Leonard Peltier. I would love it if the President would pardon and release him before he leaves office.
I HAVE DISCUSSED LEONARD PELTIER WITH MANY OF MY NATIVE AMERICAN FRIENDS…THE CONVICTION WAS UNJUST AND HIS PARDON WOULD BE SUCH A BLESSING TO OUR BELOVED NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLE! THIS WOULD BE……….OH MY…SUCH A MOMENT TO CELEBRATE IN NATIVE HISTORY! I HAVE LEARNED SO MUCH ABOUT THE WHITE MANS’ CRUELTY TO THESE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. YOU CANNOT BUILD A COUNTRY ON THEFT OF LAND..EVENTUALLY IT CATCHES UP WITH YOU AS…. TRUTH ALWAYS DOES..AND BECOMES A SINKHOLE FILLED WITH REGRETS..GOD’S JUSTICE NEVER EVER FAILS!
Just FANTASTIC. President Obama is absolutely the best. Thank you NW!
🙂
MY HEART IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FULL….THANK YOU PRESIDENT OBAMA FOR THIS MEMORY OF HIROSHIMA……..I HOPE THAT SOME OF THE ASHES CAN REST NOW!
BBL……………..I HOPE PBO IS CATCHING SOME HEALTHY FOOD AND SOME ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’S…………………<3
Nerdy Wonka…Thanks a million for your magnificent coverage of PBO that we get nowhere else.
You are Sunshine on a cloudy day!
Thank you Ms, Wonka for your stunning work.
Wishing you a little R & R over Memorial Day weekend.
Thanks!
Thanks so much, Hope44!
Number #1 is so true, I have a friend at work who greets me every morning with “What they do, Don.”
Number #5 is serious, never question a brother when he’s wearing linen, especially if he’s over 35. Please please please, under no circumstance should you ever attend a white party if you aren’t in full command of our attire. You’ve been warned.
Number #6 is true also, we have scented candles in dinning room and in the foyer and in the master bedroom and master bathroom.
Number #7 is true, I have female friends and without them giving me an explanation I know in which context they are using the word “girl.”
Number #8 is true, please learn how to use “cousin” in the proper context.
I love your comments Don – and the article, suddenly so much makes sense to me since TOD came into my world. I do not understand #5 – will have to study up on that.
from a white girl’s viewpoint
#3 – I so understood this one – my answer was always – “self-important men”
#6 – all my friend’s daughters (generation thing in my world)
#8 – white people definitely do this too – cousins are very important in my family & older ones are always given the title.
Oh Girl!!!!!!!
Rikyrah, you got me rolling with laughter and shaking my head – YES!!!
Then, I read the comments and fell out laughing.
My people are so colorful 🙂
For the 1st time in a Long time, I was Up & I watched POTUS’ Hiroshima Speech. I watched it LIVE & on BBC. Then I was never able to go to speech. I am sleep deprived more than usual. But I am a Happy Clappy Liberal today 😉
Hello TOD. Thanks, NW. You have kept it 100 covering the Energizer Bunny all week. Thanks to Chips, Amk and the rest of the TOD TODbot Gangsters 🙂
Congrats to all the Gold ⭐ winners since last Evening.
So sorry to read that my Rafael Nadal as withdrawn from the French Clay Tournament due to a wrist injury.
Back to catching up.
Good. And I hope that’s one promise Trump keeps.
Bernie got played – helped Trump in his attacks on Sec Clinton. I will NEVER understand why the media refuses to call Trump out on his disgusting language – not to mention the rest of his reality show persona.
The media saw it might get them something – like he’d throw ’em a bone. He exposed what we already knew about many in the media!
Added with no comment…
I happen to believe that the donkey is the greatest animal on Earth.
Donkeys have the permanent expression that says: “Life. It’s a pile of doo-doo, isn’t it? Got any food?”
Yet in Wajir, Kenya, they’ve decided to tear the very dignity from this most dignified of animals.
As the BBC reports, town officials have written to those whose preferred mode of transport is the donkey cart and told them to equip their donkeys with diapers or not to enter the town at all.
……………………………………. //
http://www.cnet.com/news/town-forces-donkeys-to-wear-diapers/
This interview about Barack is well worth listening to again!!!!! I had forgotten about this, and it is great listening to her again now. So sad that she’s passed over.
Wow…Incredible,,,,,
Isn’t it though, PF! 🙂 🙂 🙂
It always gives me tremendous pleasure to listen to, or read, the reaction to, or description of, Pres O by those who know him well. Their assessment is always consistent not only across the board, but also with what we TODobots know of him! Truth is, whenever I start to re-listen to any of these I ALWAYS get roped in even if I decide before that I’ll only listen to a bit. 🙂 It is just so wonderful to listen and to be able to nod along while saying ‘Yes, that’s true!’ I’ve seen exactly that!’ ‘Hmmm, that’s how he leads’ ‘etc. etc.’ We. have. been. blessed!!! And many of us know it – here and around the world!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/choice-2012/the-frontline-interview-cassandra-butts/#seg6
// …………….
CB: Yeah, I think that some of the expectations that people had of how he should identify or how he shouldn’t identify, the positions that he should have on issues and the positions that he ultimately had on issues, you know, Barack was not and is not predictable. He’s thoughtful. He’ll tell you what he believes, but it isn’t always what you expect.
REPORTER: So that hence, when I interview Berenson, and he says: “I love the guy. I really didn’t expect to. We’re all the guys that run the Bush administration.” … And that he thought Obama handled the really supercharged issues like affirmative action and other things really right down the middle. Am I answering your question for you?
CB: I think that Brad is right in that regard. It wasn’t without controversy in that there was an expectation, as I indicated, that he would be in one place just in terms of his ideological approach is to the left. And there was an expectation that as the president of the Law Review that he would side — well, there was an expectation on the part of his more progressive colleagues at the Law Review that he would side with them on issues.
But he recognized that his role was such that he had to bring both sides together. And in order to publish the Law Review and to be productive in his term as president, he had to figure out how to make it work and how to make both sides work together, which meant that he wasn’t always going to side with his progressive colleagues, that he had to take the interests and the ideas of the people on the right into account.
And it’s not to suggest that where he was on the issue was being reflected in the decision that he made. But it did reflect what he needed to do as a leader in order to produce the Law Review.
…………………………………………………….
REP: For sure. And you, Cassandra, have seen him over 20 years carry that attitude into many other things, yes? …
CB: You know, I don’t know if it’s that. I don’t know if he was that conscious. It was an approach that worked on the Law Review. And just thinking about his public experience or his experience as a public official in the Senate in Illinois, you know, it is Barack’s natural inclination to reach across the aisle. It’s [his] personality. And it’s also just his intellect. He has a very engaging intellect. He’s not interested necessarily in dominating the conversation. He wants to bring people into the conversation. He wants to understand different points of view. And understanding those different points of view informs the way he thinks about issues.
It isn’t necessarily that it’s going to change his opinion, but it will make him more thoughtful as he approaches an issue. And I think that that is what has informed his experience in public life, what informed his experience on the Law Review, and what’s informed his experience as a public official.
……………………. //
It is always, always a joy to listen to people who know Barack Obama well (and for years/decades) speak about him! They always attest to his authenticity.
// ……………………..
CB: …………………….
Just an example, this notion of his ambition: I campaigned in New Hampshire and [former Sen.] Bill Bradley [D-N.J.] endorsed Barack at that point, and came to New Hampshire to do some campaigning for him. …
And he said that you see politicians and they’re in front of a crowd, and they’re soaking up all the energy from the crowd, and they’re getting big, and they’re swelling up, and that what attracted him to Barack was that when Barack is in front of a crowd, he isn’t absorbing the energy that they’re giving him and getting larger and becoming puffed up. He reflects that energy back on the people who are in the crowd. He energizes them.
I thought that that was incredibly insightful. And it does go to this notion of, what’s his ambition? And it goes back to him as a community organizer and the kind of leadership style that he has, that he reflects the energy and that ambition back to the people who are out there in the crowd. It isn’t him soaking in their energy and being the kind of leader that is the only one on the stage. He has this ability to bring people in the process where they really feel that they’re part of the process and that they can make a difference. And that’s, I think, his skill as a politician.
……………………… //
Just read the transcript it was really really good.
I wasn’t going to watch this, but Luvvie has convinced me.
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On ROOTS Reimagined and Retelling This Classic Story
Awesomely Luvvie — May 26, 2016 1 24
When I first heard that they wanted to remake ROOTS, I legit was like “Bhet why?” The mini-series from 1977, based on Alex Haley‘s book of the same name is one of those classics that everyone knows about even if they haven’t seen. Why touch it? Why do we need to see a new version of the harrowing tale of Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka warrior, stolen and sold into slavery? It was the role that catapulted LeVar Burton into stardom, and it is so strongly HIS that why would they even try to re-do it?
………………………………
Those were my questions when the ROOTS team reached out to me. I was hella skeptical. And then they told me why they were re-imagining (not remaking) ROOTS. It turns out that most millennials (people under 35) have never seen the original ROOTS. We’ve seen clips of the “What’s your name? KUNTA.” scene, but many of us have never sat down to watch it. Me included.
So they sent me a screener of the first episode of ROOTS Reimagined. Y’all. Y’ALL. I watched it and when it ended, I felt trapped in a glass case of emotions. I felt anger that was visceral. I felt proud, from the resilience of my people. And I felt more than ever that this was necessary. This is a time when this conversation can be really productive.
Isn’t this what folks like me have been saying?
This isn’t about freedom of speech.
This is about freedom from the CONSEQUENCES of expressing that ‘ freedom of speech’.
They want to be able to party like it’s 1948, where a WHITE MALE, cause that’s who we’re talking about…
could go around and call me Nigger, without there being any consequences.
Well, today, if he does it, he doesn’t know or not, if he’s rolled up ‘ the wrong one’,. and his teeth will wind up looking like Chicklets on the pavement. And, that’s the lesser of what could happen to him.
Nobody’s playing with these muthaphuckas.
He’s all big and bad..then BE all big and bad…
but, accept the consequences for being all big and bad…
Man……PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
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A Dialogue With a 22-Year-Old Donald Trump Supporter
He lives near San Francisco, makes more than $50,000 per year, and is voting for the billionaire to fight against political correctness.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF 9:20 AM ET
For several days, I’ve been corresponding with a 22-year-old Donald Trump supporter. He is white, has a bachelor’s degree, and earns $50,000 to $60,000 per year.
He lives near San Francisco.
“I recently became engaged to my Asian fiancée who is making roughly 3 times what I make, and I am completely supportive of her and proud she is doing so well,” he wrote. “We’ve both benefitted a lot from globalization. We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters,” he observed, “but we’re not. In 2016, we’re both going for Trump.”
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Trump Voter: We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters. But we’re not. Both of us voted Libertarian in 2012, and ideologically we remain so. But in 2016? We’re both going for Trump.
For me personally, it’s resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture. That’s where it’s almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion. Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc. It can provoke a reaction so intense that you’re suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend. There is no saying “Hey, I disagree with you,” it’s just instant shunning. Say things online, and they’ll try to find out who you are and potentially even get you fired for it. Being anti-PC is not about saying “I want you to agree with me on these issues.” It’s about saying, “Hey, I want to have a discussion and not get shouted down because I don’t agree with what is considered to be politically correct.”
Whenever I hear someone complain about political correctness, I take it to mean that they want to be able say whatever they want to without suffering the consequences.
Thankfully his vote and that of his fiancee’s will be useless since he’s in an ultra Blue state. No one is shocked that people voting for Trump are straight up idiots.
I’m sure this story must’ve already came to TOD. I just ran across it. Wow!
I love my President. He is the epitome of leadership and compassion.
Love seeing Caroline with our President!
Now, THAT is messaging! Go, Hillary!
What Japanese in India thought of Obama’s Hiroshima visit.
For a modest population of people living in close-knit communities across India — Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Sataku or Japantown, Haldia — May 27, 2016 was a meaningful day when the clock turned back. And new healing began.
“The American president’s visit to Hiroshima is historically significant,” says Yoji Yoshikawa, principal of the Japanese School Educational Trust (started 40 years ago) in Chennai.
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“Whether he will apologise or not now is not a problem. I want him to make an effort to create a new world, by learning from history. It is a good direction. It is most important that we move forward step by step,” he says.
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“I feel very happy. I believe it makes President Obama very special, in a sense that no other US President has ever done (visited Hiroshima, which the Americans devastated with an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, killing thousands and maiming thousands of others). I believe it will make an emotional moment for all Japanese all over the world,” says Isogai.
Ando offers observation that Obama’s trip to this now ultra-modern southern Japanese city of one million plus, where he said, ‘Death fell from the sky,’ made her feel “very positive.”
It was a huge moment for the Japanese, Ando adds, especially since no other incumbent American president has had the courage to visit Hiroshima before.
Obama, she says, was already a popular figure in her country because he is perceived as a different kind of leader, raised to think differently. But from now onwards, she agrees, he would be a hero in Japan, having endeared himself to the next many generations of Japanese with his simple but momentous and “sentimental” gesture.
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/what-japanese-in-india-thought-of-obamas-hiroshima-visit/20160527.htm
Blessings TODers – especially to Ms Chips
Wonderful pictures, irreplaceable man.
Many thanks Nerdy W. You are the best with the news that matters.
Thanks, 99ts!
Thank you JER, happy he is home safe & sound. He had a busy week and Nerdy & You kept us all well informed. My many thanks to both of you.
Two heartbreaking stories from those who witnesses Kennedy assassinations:
I watched Judy Woodward on PBS News Hour tonight, and of course they found several people in Japan that were not happy President Obama didn’t apologize for the Bomb and didn’t believe him when he said he wanted no more nuclear bombs especially since we are maintaining our arsenal and upgrading them. Could watch the whole hour.
Of course he did. Can you imagine how proud his mother would be (and, I believe, is)!
Oh my gosh, she would absolutely be beside herself with pride at each and every one of his historic achievements. I so wish she could’ve have shared his extraordinary life as President on this earth.
It’s a little early for a Father’s Day message … but may forget to post this in June for all the dads on TOD! It’s from a Christian comedian I just ran into accidentally … glorious! (Bring tissues.)
. https://twitter.com/JOBoomr/status/736356824304193537
That’s a 10/10 wow jacqueline – good news week on TOD 🙂
my pet peeve with du.
This is the real stuff that matters. Rest is all bs of a noise.
OMG – as a Mom, I’m damn near weeping at that wonderful story!
New post.
https://theobamadiary.com/2016/05/27/president-obama-visits-service-members/
Please RT this very effective piece. It really sums up the disgusting lies and fascism Trump propagates.