I am just wonderful and fine, dear and precious vcprezofan2, because it’s a beautiful summer day, and I am in an air-conditioned library with a view of green leafy sun-dappled trees, and because I am thinking of you and our DC delightful TOD gathering, and because President Barack Obama is our leader and blessing the world another day. I love how RanMan always reminds me that every day with POTUS in charge is a rich and glorious day. Hope you are doing fine too.
Good to hear you’re having an all-round good time, Nancie! I am wonderfully fine – I am alive. I am well. I am blessed. The sun’s not shining and they’ve mentioned a possible thunderstorm but I’m inside playing on my laptop and the weather is pleasantly cool. Life’s good. 🙂 🙂
I am overwhelmed by the beauty of these photos … of course the subjects are what make them so special. “Our girls” (Malia and Sasha) are beautiful, their clothes, their skin, the way they carry themselves … And our gorgeous First Lady and her Mom (also beautiful). Thank you for these. I would like to visit Spain someday!
So I’m getting into it with some keyboard warriors online ( I know I know…). I was informed that Hillary Clinton is Totally corrupt!
I asked why, or what specifically makes her totally corrupt? I got a long winded response that boiled down to the Clinton foundation “May own cattle futures!” oH no, the horrors of that! What I don’t get is where some of this stuff even comes from, and furthermore why people just believe it. Like is there some right wing hit piece out there about cattle futures or what? LOL.
I really think the girls are not fond of the camera in their face 24/7. They knew when they walk toward the stairs and up them the camera would be on them.
I think that is when people shout 4 More Years, there is a family that must be consider, because Malia and Sasha might feel like Michelle, eight years is enough..
When people shout 4 More Years, there is a family that must be consider, because Malia and Sasha might feel like Michelle, eight years is enough .Malia and Sasha has grown up in the spotlight.
Thank you Nerdy for your wonderful coverage of our POTUS and FLOYUS’s trips. You are some awesome lady to keep up with what that family does in a week. :-). Wishing you the best for the 4th weekend. I know you will be on line to keep us up to date on all that is happening the the Obama world. But bless you for your skill and dedication to Chips, her family and this site.
Good Friday all of TODville. I am in Carson City, NV having a wonderful visit with my aunt and cousins. I love my family but we can never discuss politics. We are not compatible there.
That is only 1 of the reasons I love TOD and this community. Nerdy Wonka, the yeomans work you have done to keep this going for Chips and for all of us is so appreciated!!! This community is so important to all of us. The time that I spent in DC with other TODders was so special.
I have the same family member problems about politics. One brother is a die hard cling to his gun and bible guy living in MT. He always votes GOP. My other brother is a Constitutionalist, Libertarian, conspiracy theorist, and a never Hillary guy. My oldest son and wife voted for Bernie Sanders. His company worked the 2008 political campaigns setting up stages etcetera. Obama’s campaign paid up quickly, but Hillary’s did not so that influenced him. My second son and his wife jumped on the BS bandwagon too due to what Bernie stood for. I tried to dissuade him towards Hillary to no avail. My daughter living in Germany voted Hillary and so did my youngest daughter and her husband. I got all of them except for my MT brother to vote for Obama in 2008 plus my parents.
I think my adult kids and spouses will vote Hillary, but not my brothers this time around.
I think in today’s world we all have family members on the crazy side. Your MT brother sounds like many of my friends. I have very few friends at home that I discuss politics at all.
Thanks Dudette. I think knowing this community is here keeps us all going. Hope you have had a great day. I am so glad to be home watching the Macy’s, the Capitol, and the Boston Pops shows.
Tomorrow will be a good day…….they’ve been few the past two weeks. However, Steve and his family are coming tomorrow for the weekend, so I’ll have wonderful noise, people, laughter, jokes, and all the life I haven’t had here in months. I’m ready for them. Have actually done some grocery shopping this week lol. However, I’m not fixing dinner either Saturday or Sunday. Tomorrow I’m ordering ribs, etc. from a nearby local restaurant….they’re delicious, and Sunday I’m ordering fried chicken and the fixin’s from a grocery store that makes the best. This way, I can enjoy the family, and not worry about food.
I like the sound of your ‘company’ plans – it’ll be good to be able to enjoy the family without the busy-ness of cooking etc.. Have a great and congenial time, Carolyn!
Wonderful for you to have your son’s family visiting on this celebratory long-holiday weekend. What a treat for the grandkids to visit Grandma and have lots of fun.
Don’t forget the potato salad — what would July 4th be without it? (Admit I’m partial to potatoes — when I was in elementary school needed to write an essay on my favorite food (think it might have been part of a Girl Scouts assignment) and I opted for potatoes.
“The algae outbreaks are triggered by fertilizer sewage and manure pollution that the state has failed to properly regulate. It’s like adding miracle grow to the water and it triggers massive algae outbreaks,” Earthjustice spokeswoman Alisa Coe told CNN.
Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, has been fighting for tougher pollution limits in the state.
“We’ve seen this for years and years and instead of addressing the problem, here we are on the Fourth of July weekend with a state of emergency being declared,” Coe said. “Usually folks would be out fishing, swimming and enjoying the beach with their families. Instead, they are left with water that is too toxic to touch.”
Toxic blooms can affect the gastrointestinal system, liver, nervous system and skin, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Didn’t read the article, but @nytimes has this at the top of their home page now:
“Oozing Green Menace Marches on Florida
By LES NEUHAUS 7:24 PM ET
A reeking advance of algae in South Florida was created by competing environmental, residential and agricultural interests, along with a failure to manage the demands of growth.”
SMH.
Can’t believe Americans didn’t learn the lessons from the 1970s when the air was pretty much unbreathable in Los Angeles, the Great Lakes routinely caught fire and the toxic conditions at Love Canal threatened the health of its residents.
Wish that Americans had a memory longer than the previous installment of whatever television show they watch.
Before departing, urge all of you to read and spread ….
“Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.”
“The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.
In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.
With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal international”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.”
The Obama Diary 
Thank you thank you thank you, Nerdy Wonka. Another daymaker.
Well, hello there Nancie! I came back 10 mins too late to walk in with you! How are you?
I am just wonderful and fine, dear and precious vcprezofan2, because it’s a beautiful summer day, and I am in an air-conditioned library with a view of green leafy sun-dappled trees, and because I am thinking of you and our DC delightful TOD gathering, and because President Barack Obama is our leader and blessing the world another day. I love how RanMan always reminds me that every day with POTUS in charge is a rich and glorious day. Hope you are doing fine too.
Good to hear you’re having an all-round good time, Nancie! I am wonderfully fine – I am alive. I am well. I am blessed. The sun’s not shining and they’ve mentioned a possible thunderstorm but I’m inside playing on my laptop and the weather is pleasantly cool. Life’s good. 🙂 🙂
Congrats, Nancie!
Nerdy, as always, YOU ROCK! Thank you! 🙂 ❤ 🙂
Congratulations Nancie, and a very special thank you to NerdyWonka❣
Congratulations, Nancie on your gold medal!
Congrats, Nancie!
Thanks, Nancie!
TY Nerdy W. for all that you do to keep us informed of our FLOTUS and First Daughters. I love their shoes. Lovely. HZ
Thanks, HZ!
I hope the Obama family can take a long, quiet weekend together. They deserve the comfort of being with each other.
I am overwhelmed by the beauty of these photos … of course the subjects are what make them so special. “Our girls” (Malia and Sasha) are beautiful, their clothes, their skin, the way they carry themselves … And our gorgeous First Lady and her Mom (also beautiful). Thank you for these. I would like to visit Spain someday!
So I’m getting into it with some keyboard warriors online ( I know I know…). I was informed that Hillary Clinton is Totally corrupt!
I asked why, or what specifically makes her totally corrupt? I got a long winded response that boiled down to the Clinton foundation “May own cattle futures!” oH no, the horrors of that! What I don’t get is where some of this stuff even comes from, and furthermore why people just believe it. Like is there some right wing hit piece out there about cattle futures or what? LOL.
TGIF!
I’LL BE GLAD WHEN THE LADES ARE HOME..I WOULD RATHER SEE THEM TRAVEL AS A FAMILY..ESPECIALLY DURING TIMES THE WAY THEY ARE………….
I DON’T CARE HOW MANY SS THEY HAVE..I WOULD STILL RATHER SEE THEM TRAVEL AS A FAMILY…………………………..
THE GIRLS DON’T LOOK TOO EXCITED ABOUT LEAVING AND HEADING BACK TO DC..CAN’T SAY THAT I BLAME THEM!
I really think the girls are not fond of the camera in their face 24/7. They knew when they walk toward the stairs and up them the camera would be on them.
I think that is when people shout 4 More Years, there is a family that must be consider, because Malia and Sasha might feel like Michelle, eight years is enough..
When people shout 4 More Years, there is a family that must be consider, because Malia and Sasha might feel like Michelle, eight years is enough .Malia and Sasha has grown up in the spotlight.
Thank you, Nerdy Wonka, for following FLOTUS, First Grandma, and the First Daughters in their overseas trip.
My thoughts goes to Chips while my thanks today go to you.
Thank you.
Another great juicy post. Thanks, Nerdy!!
Thanks, Judith!
Thank you Nerdy for your wonderful coverage of our POTUS and FLOYUS’s trips. You are some awesome lady to keep up with what that family does in a week. :-). Wishing you the best for the 4th weekend. I know you will be on line to keep us up to date on all that is happening the the Obama world. But bless you for your skill and dedication to Chips, her family and this site.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Roberta. 😀
Good Friday all of TODville. I am in Carson City, NV having a wonderful visit with my aunt and cousins. I love my family but we can never discuss politics. We are not compatible there.
That is only 1 of the reasons I love TOD and this community. Nerdy Wonka, the yeomans work you have done to keep this going for Chips and for all of us is so appreciated!!! This community is so important to all of us. The time that I spent in DC with other TODders was so special.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
You too, MtM! Enjoy the compatibility you do share with your cousins and save the politics for us. 😉
Intended to say ‘save the ‘olitical insights for us’, but my brain went awol.
Thanks VC, that’s what my husband said too. Thank goodness we have so much we love to do and talk about we can stay away from politics.
I have the same family member problems about politics. One brother is a die hard cling to his gun and bible guy living in MT. He always votes GOP. My other brother is a Constitutionalist, Libertarian, conspiracy theorist, and a never Hillary guy. My oldest son and wife voted for Bernie Sanders. His company worked the 2008 political campaigns setting up stages etcetera. Obama’s campaign paid up quickly, but Hillary’s did not so that influenced him. My second son and his wife jumped on the BS bandwagon too due to what Bernie stood for. I tried to dissuade him towards Hillary to no avail. My daughter living in Germany voted Hillary and so did my youngest daughter and her husband. I got all of them except for my MT brother to vote for Obama in 2008 plus my parents.
I think my adult kids and spouses will vote Hillary, but not my brothers this time around.
I think in today’s world we all have family members on the crazy side. Your MT brother sounds like many of my friends. I have very few friends at home that I discuss politics at all.
Thanks. MT. Hope you have a great weekend as well. 😀
Have a great time! Share love & hugs! The politics will be right here when you get back. 😀
Thanks Dudette. I think knowing this community is here keeps us all going. Hope you have had a great day. I am so glad to be home watching the Macy’s, the Capitol, and the Boston Pops shows.
Thursday POTUS head to Poland for the NATO Summit and then to Spain, maybe Malia will be going with him to Spain..
AS USUA..MY WEEKEND WILL BE CRAPPY..MOVING ON SOON!
Tomorrow will be a good day…….they’ve been few the past two weeks. However, Steve and his family are coming tomorrow for the weekend, so I’ll have wonderful noise, people, laughter, jokes, and all the life I haven’t had here in months. I’m ready for them. Have actually done some grocery shopping this week lol. However, I’m not fixing dinner either Saturday or Sunday. Tomorrow I’m ordering ribs, etc. from a nearby local restaurant….they’re delicious, and Sunday I’m ordering fried chicken and the fixin’s from a grocery store that makes the best. This way, I can enjoy the family, and not worry about food.
Everyone have a good weekend.
I like the sound of your ‘company’ plans – it’ll be good to be able to enjoy the family without the busy-ness of cooking etc.. Have a great and congenial time, Carolyn!
GE Carolyn.
Wonderful for you to have your son’s family visiting on this celebratory long-holiday weekend. What a treat for the grandkids to visit Grandma and have lots of fun.
Don’t forget the potato salad — what would July 4th be without it? (Admit I’m partial to potatoes — when I was in elementary school needed to write an essay on my favorite food (think it might have been part of a Girl Scouts assignment) and I opted for potatoes.
carolyn – Enjoy it all!
Have a wonderful time with your family, Carolyn.
Thank you, Jer, for all you do in providing us with clips from the President and his family’s trips.
Awesome Thread, NW. Job well done. Thanks.
Good Evening, TODable Community.
Congrats, Nancie on your Au ⭐
Malia & Sasha look Fantastic.
😀
Thanks.
Brought to you from the Anti regulation republicans…
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/01/us/florida-algae-pollution/index.html
“The algae outbreaks are triggered by fertilizer sewage and manure pollution that the state has failed to properly regulate. It’s like adding miracle grow to the water and it triggers massive algae outbreaks,” Earthjustice spokeswoman Alisa Coe told CNN.
Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, has been fighting for tougher pollution limits in the state.
“We’ve seen this for years and years and instead of addressing the problem, here we are on the Fourth of July weekend with a state of emergency being declared,” Coe said. “Usually folks would be out fishing, swimming and enjoying the beach with their families. Instead, they are left with water that is too toxic to touch.”
Toxic blooms can affect the gastrointestinal system, liver, nervous system and skin, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Happy Fourth of July, Florida!
GE DF.
Didn’t read the article, but @nytimes has this at the top of their home page now:
“Oozing Green Menace Marches on Florida
By LES NEUHAUS 7:24 PM ET
A reeking advance of algae in South Florida was created by competing environmental, residential and agricultural interests, along with a failure to manage the demands of growth.”
SMH.
Can’t believe Americans didn’t learn the lessons from the 1970s when the air was pretty much unbreathable in Los Angeles, the Great Lakes routinely caught fire and the toxic conditions at Love Canal threatened the health of its residents.
Wish that Americans had a memory longer than the previous installment of whatever television show they watch.
So sad for those families & that community.
And the beat goes on. Can’t wait until it’s over (favorably, of course, for all Democrats!).
Happy Canada Day to our neighbors !
Goodnight, TODville! Enjoy your Fourth of July weekend. (We love you, Chips!)
Good morning TOD 🙂
Hope all of you have a fun 4th of July Weekend!!
What a glorious photo!
Before departing, urge all of you to read and spread ….
“Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.”
“The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.
In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.
With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal international”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.”
George Monbiot’s How Did We Get into This Mess? is published this month by Verso.
Thanks Bob. That’s my reading today.
Good morning, TOD! Doing a “drive-by.” Have a great 4th of July weekend! Read you later…
New post.
https://theobamadiary.com/2016/07/02/early-bird-chat-npr-and-president-barack-obama-the-obama-years/