Get to know Samantha Martinez, the Founder of @GageParkLatinx—a grassroots Latinx, queer, DACA, artist-led organization in Chicago. As part of our newest class of #ObamaScholars at @UChicago, she’ll be gaining new perspectives to help amplify her efforts. pic.twitter.com/OQ4YCiO54d
— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation) September 23, 2021
95 Responses to “Obama Scholar”
Comments are currently closed.
Obama White House.gov
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
WH Tumblr
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
The People’s View
- Follow me at my new venture: Reclaim the Fight Spandan Chakrabarti
- Ignore the bait: Why it’s the right strategy for Democrats to focus SCOTUS fight on health care Spandan Chakrabarti
- BIG: Judge halts Trump administration attempt to shortcut the census Spandan Chakrabarti
- Trump doesn't want peaceful transition of power. Legally, it doesn’t matter. Spandan Chakrabarti
- Fauci goes off on Rand Paul Spandan Chakrabarti
Smartypants
- If the U.S. Experienced Another Pearl Harbor, Republicans Would Blame Biden
- In a World That Seems to Have Gone Crazy, Dana Milbank Provides a Dose of Sanity
- Democrats Don't Have to Chose Between "Defund the Police" and Being "Tough on Crime"
- Does McConnell Actually Care About Winning Back a Senate Majority?
- On the Supreme Court, Ingraham Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
Steve Benen
- 'We do have a rule of law here': Why Justice Dept. should act if Meadows ignores subpoena
- Alexander Vindman: Meeting with Putin 'occurred about as good as it needed to'
- Instagram CEO to testify before Congress on safety of teen users
- Young Democrats are more likely to despise the other party, according to polling
- Biden, Putin set for call amid growing tensions over Ukraine
The Obama Diary 
Congratulations, Samantha!
Congrats, Judith!
And, of course, compliments to Samantha.
brilliant post NW and The Obama Foundation.
–yessssss Ms. Martinez and GPLXC !!!!
Pentagon Tells Greg Abbott To Stick It
And Orders Defense Contractors To Get COVID Vaccine
“The Pentagon has told federal contractors in Texas that Greg Abbott’s order doesn’t matter and they must get vaccinated.”
“This is basic civics.
Greg Abbott as a governor does not have the power or authority to supersede federal law/executive orders.
Joe Biden is the President Of The United States.
His vaccine mandate takes authority over any order that Abbott has or could issue.
Gov. Abbott can’t stop federal contractors in his state from getting the vaccine.
It is called the Supremacy Clause.
It is in the Constitution. Federal law is the supreme law of the land. Joe Biden has the authority to set the terms and conditions of employment for federal contractors.
(https://www.politicususa.com/2021/10/14/greg-abbott-pentagon.html)
—-up yours, Abbot.
—we need more hell no like this.
Good!!
That’s the “levity” we needed to see tonight!
Ooooh & so many more oohs 💞💞
That picture is so healing to my soul! Thanks for posting it!
Obama and babies – always makes us happy!
Always looked like a mutual admiration society between ’em, too!
Jan. 6 investigators move to hold Bannon in contempt
“The Select Committee will use every tool at its disposal to get the information it seeks, and witnesses who try to stonewall the Select Committee will not succeed…”
(chair, Bennie Thompson)
(https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/jan-6-committee-hold-bannon-in-contempt-516017)
👍🏿
This is so maddening!!!!
Sorry, might be off subject here. Anyhoo, switched off everything, and I mean every darn MSM noise. Then turned on my music! My home cluttered w/ joy! Necessary moments we all need now & then! 🎉🌷
Attended a Doc Martin show live a while back, grad of Howard Univ, Dentist. Dayum! His dentistry practice has gotta be badass! If he stuck w/ dentistry, coz he’s amazing on sax! Saw his live show a few years ago & my only question thereafter: dude, dentistry? You succeed in back up plan! What’s up w/ Plan One!? 😂😂😇💃
❤️
spot the cat
Like duh! Virus45 always vindictive. No wonder ugly just pours out of his every orifice! Effi, let’s serve him up a huge an overflowing trash talk, etc.
😏
Former President Bill Clinton admitted to hospital
“He was admitted to the ICU for close monitoring and administered IV antibiotics and fluids.
He remains at the hospital for continuous monitoring,”
according to a joint statement Thursday evening from Dr. Alpesh Amin, chair of medicine at UC Irvine Medical Center, and Dr. Lisa Bardack, Clinton’s personal primary physician.
“After two days of treatment, his white blood cell count is trending down and he is responding to antibiotics well,” the doctors said, adding, “We hope to have him go home soon.”
Clinton spokesman Angel Urena said the former President is “on the mend” and “in good spirits.”
(https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/14/politics/bill-clinton-hospitalized/index.html)
President Clinton, sending energy and love your way >>>>>>>>.
Please (pls) get well !!
#jailtime
wistful gaze of separation is same in all goldens…angel pupsies that want to be with you and make you happy….not so long ago with brothers and sisters…must treasure. g’night amk.
sir-pees-a-lot is sir-pees-a-lot-less now.
#jailtime works.
Hostility, threats and assaults on workers on the side of public health and health care providers across the country:
Rachel Maddow:
“Despite the threats of violence hurled at Anchorage assembly members by the public…passed (9 to 1)
the mask requirement for indoor spaces in Anchorage… (then) Anchorage’s Republican mayor who has repeatedly downplayed the virus issued a veto against the mask requirement. Republicans from the governor’s mansion in Alaska to the state legislature have echoed those sentiments. And you know we’re used to seeing the politics and the fighting over this. But in some ways it is a scary situation.
The threats of violence in Alaska aren’t an isolated or strange thing.
This isn’t some strange phenomenon that’s just occurring in Alaska.
We are seeing elements of this all across the country.
Americans are threatening the men and women across the country who are tasked with trying to come up with public health strategies to fight this epidemic. But they’re also fighting the people, and threatening the people, and assaulting the people, who are literally providing health care to people trying to survive it.”
Rachel Maddow to Emily Goodykoontz,”Anchorage Daily News” reporter, Alaska:
(Wednesday)
“And I have to tell you, we’ve been following the situation in Alaska ever since the crisis standards of care were implemented, and then seeing this sort of raucous display in the Anchorage assembly. And we’ve been in the last couple weeks, trying to talk to health care professionals in Alaska to get people to come on and talk about what’s going on. Especially once we knew that doctors and nurses were reporting not just being threatened, but actually being assaulted while they were doing their jobs.
And the thing that we have found, just to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit,
over and over again when we’ve talked to professionals working in the health care field in Alaska,
is that they are afraid to talk to us.
They are afraid sometimes to even talk to us off the record.
They are certainly afraid to put their face on television, they’re afraid to put their name to anything that associates them with the provision of health care in the state. Because they feel that the environment is so threatening, that they’ll put themselves and their families in danger simply by sticking their heads above the parapet. As a reporter in Alaska, in Anchorage, covering these things, are you finding that from your sources and from people you’d otherwise would be interviewing as well? For us, it was an unusual and sort of heart breaking thing that we went through just literally trying to book the show.”
Goodykoontz:
“I have to say first that I’m not the reporter who was talking to medical professionals on a daily basis,
I am definitely focused specifically on city government here. However I do know and I have heard from many residents, who have said they don’t want to show up to assembly meetings because they don’t feel safe. And that is for a large part just due to COVID. They don’t want to put themselves in close space where people aren’t wearing masks. But also some of the behavior in the assembly meetings has been a deterrent for people showing up to testify in person. However a lot of people have testified via written or phone testimony as well. We’ve heard recently from assembly member Austin Quinn-Davidson that there was a lot of testimony in support of a mask ordinance through written testimony.”
Just now…
Anchorage Assembly overrides Mayor Bronson’s veto of mask emergency ordinance
“The Anchorage Assembly has voted to override Mayor Dave Bronson’s veto of an emergency ordinance requiring people to wear masks in public spaces in the city. Assembly members overrode the veto in a 9-2 vote during a special meeting Thursday. Eight votes were needed to override Bronson’s veto.”
Goodykoontz, Hughes:
(https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2021/10/14/anchorage-assembly-overrides-mayor-bronsons-veto-of-mask-emergency-ordinance/
What a both sides bw asshole hack.
Love Malcolm Nance! Haven’t seen a bunch of tweets from him lately – thanks for sharing.
Wonderful news!!
It definitely is something to celebrate!
totally fab pkayden thx
READ THE THREAD
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/1448996626224205830
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/1448996626224205830
Last night the National Civil Rights Museum honored Mrs. Obama and the Poor People’s Campaign with its 30th Freedom Award.
Lucy’s going to space. 🛰
That’s twice now! Russia needs to get their act together.
Thread!
Very interesting
Dudette thx…been so wishing for this.
I wouldn’t be surprised one bit. 🧐
Dr. Jack Brown:
“This bears repeating: The second pipe bomb was not left at the RNC,
but behind the building adjacent to the RNC — the Capitol Hill Club.”
“The suspect never even walked around the RNC that night.
In multiple sources, it’s also been falsely reported (verbally and written) that the suspect left a pipe bomb at the RNC: behind the RNC, in the alley behind the RNC, etc.
— but this is NOT correct.”
= no both-sidey after all.
Michelle Obama, Poor People’s Campaign accept Freedom Awards
from National Civil Rights Museum
“Asking her audience to join her as she pledged “I’m recommitting myself” to the fight for social justice,
Michelle Obama on Thursday night accepted the 2021 Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.
Praising the example of grandparents (“the grandsons of enslaved people”) and other relatives who built purposeful lives despite the barriers of racism, Obama, 57, said America “at this very moment in time” is “facing some historic challenges.”
“Some of them are echoes of what those earlier generations faced — hatred, bigotry, discrimination, voting rights being rolled back, police brutality threatening too many of our loved ones,” said the lawyer, writer, education advocate, former first lady and wife of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
But some challenges, she added, “are new or more urgent to our time. Folks in power inciting an attack on our Capitol. Disagreement not just on politics but even on matters of basic fact. The peril of a changing climate threatening our entire planet.”
………………………………………………
Poor People’s Campaign receives Freedom Award
The other 2021 Freedom Award went to a collective honoree:
The “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival,” an anti-poverty effort that carries on the economic justice mission of the original 1968 Poor People’s Campaign launched by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
According to the civil rights museum, this new Poor People’s Campaign confronts
“the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism,” while championing “the power of poor people to be change agents at the very heart of democracy.”
The revived campaign is headed by North Carolina’s William J. Barber II, 58, and New York’s Liz Theoharis, 45, who were at the Orpheum to collect the award.
Each gave a rousing oration, enjoining the audience to combat what Barber called the “morally indefensible and economically insane” force of systemic racism and poverty — “interlocking injustices,” according to Theoharis, that include “ecological devastation, the denial of health care, war and the war economy…”
Barber said poverty was not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. “What about an agenda of right versus wrong?”
(https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/local/2021/10/14/freedom-awards-2021-national-civil-rights-museum-michelle-obama-poor-peoples-campaign/8442677002/
Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and Vaccination Program
October 14 2021
“Now, I know parents out there are anxiously waiting for a vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
The good news is the FDA and outside experts from the CDC are set to make its determination as to whether the vaccine will be authorized for that age range in the next few weeks.
If authorized, we are ready. We have purchased enough vaccines for all children between the ages of 5 and 11
in the United States. It will be — it will be convenient for parents to get their children vaccinated at trusted locations, and families will be able to sleep easier at night knowing their kids are protected as well.”
Full: (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/10/14/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-covid-19-response-and-vaccination-program-2/)
Great Thread
Black Lives Matter, She Wrote. Then ‘Everything Just Imploded.’
“A Black superintendent’s email to parents after the killing of George Floyd engulfed a small, predominantly white Maryland community in a yearlong firestorm.”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/us/politics/maryland-superintendent-racism-black-lives-matter.html)
—-Dr. Andrea Kane, fmr Superintendent, Queen Anne’s County, Maryland Public Schools.
“Racism is alive in our country, our state, in Queen Anne’s County, and our schools,”
she wrote in the letter, emailed to the parents of all 7,700 students in the district.
Her statement mirrored hundreds that superintendents across the country had issued in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s death and the mass protests that followed.
Many of the educators took the opportunity to renew their commitment to racial justice in their schools.
But the message from Dr. Kane, the first Black superintendent of Queen Anne’s County Public Schools, would engulf the small, predominantly white community tucked along the Chesapeake Bay
in a yearlong firestorm.”
More: (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/us/politics/maryland-superintendent-racism-black-lives-matter.html)
Dr. Andrea Kane talks to Joy Reid.
Reid:
“This was a slave state with a long history of discrimination.
Talk a little bit about how it was received when you sent that e-mail. For those who have not read that story in “The New York Times,” what happened?”
Kane:
“It was a typical letter. So superintendents send letters to the community to keep them updated all the time. And I was the same way. I sent a letter. And I included a lot of information about things that were happening in the district. But then I also felt compelled to talk about what was happening in terms of the racism that our country was experiencing.
And how we ought to talk with our children about the images that they see on television.
In the same letter, I asked the community to extend grace to one another, to listen to each other.
And I gave them some tips that I had collected from a scholar, Tyrone Howard, about how we ought to deal with this. And how we ought to help our children make meaning from this. And it was not well-received at first by a handful. Initially I did get a lot of thank yous from teachers and from parents to say
‘You’re shining a light on this. It’s important. We need to talk about this’.
And then the hate started.
And it was vile. It was absolutely vile.
We were called, as Black people, called everything…and it was just ridiculous.
So at that point a community group, the Sunday Supper Committee, they launched a campaign in response to the Schifanelli (“there is no systemic racism”) campaign, to say “Hey, let our children talk about race, this is happening across the country, and burying our heads in the sand isn’t going to make it go away’.
Reid:
“I was just going to say the irony first of all of using racism and racist attacks – to demand that people stop talking about racism and insisting there is no racism, that’s kind of ironic.”
Kane:
“I think that it did make a difference.
And I say that because I have gotten e-mails and text messages to say:
‘Thank you. What you did made a difference.’ Now the question becomes is it going to continue?
And probably not. But I know that I made a difference. We’ve done professional development on culturally responsive teaching, cultural relevance, equity on a regular basis since I arrived in Queen Anne’s County. And that was absolutely critical. I put different initiatives in place to ensure that equity was a part of what was happening in schools, equitable practices. With ensuring that black, brown and poor children who were in advanced placement classes. In addition to the way we looked at our data, the way we analyzed our data. All of our administrators had an equity goal as did I. So we were we were well on our way to doing what needed to be done for students in the district. And I receive a lot of thank yous even now from teachers about that.”
Reid:
“I can tell you that just reading about some of the young people – they had not seen a Black woman
with the kind of power that you had before you. And that in and of itself inspired them. And you inspired so many people. And I just want to thank you for standing up for the truth and for real history. And you took a lot of hell for it. But I just want to thank you for doing what you did in Queen Anne’s County. Thank you.”
WOWWWWWW…………. LOOK AT Pete👀
A truly well-earned and well-deserved honor! Bravo, Pete Souza! Bravo!
🕊🕯💕👏🏼🏵👏🏼💕🕯🕊
Big congrats Pete Souza on your art, and your record of the Obamas is priceless.
🕊🕯🗝🕯🕊
WOW>>>>>>what will they do…will they defy…the DOJ??🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
good listen
(pls don’t get me started…!)
Here:
(https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/pennsylvania-attorney-general-shapiro-running-for-governor-filed-motion-to-block-republican-election-investigation-123598917624)
Pennsylvania AG Shapiro vows to use ‘veto pen’ to protect state if elected governor
“Thursday in Pennsylvania, where Republicans are trying to obtain private personal information on all 7 million state voters for an ‘investigation’, Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a motion to have the courts block them. Shapiro joins Joy Reid in his first national interview since announcing his run for Pennsylvania governor on Wednesday.”
—-imo AG Shapiro has been a godsend alongside us throughout and look fwd to him being Governor.
AMEN
Calls intensify to end Wisconsin’s election review
amid blunders by ex-judge in charge
“Michael Gableman, the former judge leading the review, admitted days later that he does not have
“a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work.” He then backed off some of his subpoena demands before reversing course again, telling a local radio host that officials would still be required to testify.”
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/14/wisconsin-election-review-gableman-errors/)
…n’ery a clue.
Kaiser Permanente workers In California And Oregon vote to authorize a strike
Interview with Jane Carter who is on the Union negotiating team:
“Unionized nurses and other health care workers in California and Oregon voted to authorize a strike. Their union is negotiating with Kaiser Permanente, which runs a number of hospitals and clinics there. The nurses and others are not striking now, just authorizing a strike. Though it raises the prospect of a mid-pandemic walkout.
The Alliance of Health Care Unions is objecting to a proposed two-tiered wage system.
Kaiser is proposing lower wages for workers hired in the future than for people on the job now.”
(Steve Inskeep, NPR)
(https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1045904239/kaiser-permanente-workers-in-california-and-oregon-vote-to-authorize-a-strike)
Chris Hayes: Striketober.
“Americans my generation and younger
have never lived through a world in which workers have been particularly empowered in relations to their bosses and to capital. And it seems like we could be approaching one of those periods now. The American labor force is using this moment to its advantage.
As of today, more than 10 000 employees of the tractor company John Deere are now on strike across 14 plants in five states demanding higher wages, as the company is expected to report record profits. The international alliance of theatrical stage employees, that’s the guild representing the production crews who make the movies and TV shows you watch possible. is set to go on strike next Monday if its demands are not met.
More than 24,000 nurses and other health care workers have voted to authorize a strike against industry giant Kaiser Permanente, citing poor conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Those 3 strikes alone, just those three would account for roughly 90,000 workers in this country walking off the job in the span of a few weeks.
But that’s not all. Employees of the serial giant Kellogg’s have been on strike for over a week now…
Nurses and hospital workers are striking in Buffalo, New York, and Worcester Massachusetts, with the Massachusetts nurses strike now the longest in the state’s history. Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike since April, which is in addition to the successful strike by employees from snack companies Frito-Lay and Nabisco that happened this summer.
It really does feel like a kind of a sea change moment in American politics or at least something we haven’t
quite seen before recently. I often cite this graph here as an example of the waning power of labor in this country. The bar represents the number of strikes in each given year since the post-World War II period.
You can see there were hundreds of major strikes a year in the 1950s through the 1970s,
and then Ronald Reagan gets elected in 1980 on the back of a revitalized conservative movement.
He breaks the Air Traffic Controller strike quite famously, uses the newfound power and popularity, and absolutely decimate collective bargaining in this country. And there you see it – worker action takes a nosedive.
I don’t know if the labor movement will ever reach the heights the 1950s again when good high-paying union jobs built the American middle class. But it does seem pretty clear this country is now at an inflection point.
Something has been disrupted. We are seeing mass collective action in a way we have not in generations.”
White House To Moderna: Make More Covid Vaccine!
“Dr. David Kessler, chief science officer for the Biden administration’s Covid response,
talks with Rachel Maddow about the latest Covid vaccine data and the need to increase the production of vaccine to get more the world population immunized.
Jan. 6 committee preparing to aggressively enforce subpoenas,
targets former Trump DOJ official
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jan-6-committee-clark-bannon/2021/10/13/2468292e-2c2a-11ec-8ef6-3ca8fe943a92_story.html)
Well said!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgSwGR17dQ4)
Congressman Schiff:
If Steve Bannon Feels He’s Above The Law, He’s About To Find Out Otherwise
“He will be prosecuted, that’s our expectation,” says Rep. Adam Schiff.
on the Jan. 6 committee moving to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt for defying the subpoena.
“He apparently feels he’s above the law. But he’s about to find out otherwise.”
“Steve Bannon committed a crime today.”
Congressman Raskin,
House Select Committee investigating Jan 6 attack on the Capitol:
“Steve Bannon committed a crime today.
People have to understand that. Because it is important that people obey subpoenas they get,
whether from a court or from Congress. These are orders of law. You have to comply with them. He committed a crime and so we have referred him for prosecution on criminal contempt.”
AG Josh Kaul, WI:
“But I view the ongoing ‘investigation’ as somewhat of a hybrid
between what we saw in Arizona and what we saw from Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell after the election.
Just really incompetent, almost comical lawyering. But the thing that’s not comical – and we saw this with what happened after the election – is that just because these things are conducted in a way that is not serious,
doesn’t mean there aren’t serious consequences. We saw that with the insurrection. And we need to make sure we’re working to shut this process down before this leads to bad consequences as well.”
Wisconsin AG Josh Kaul called Gableman’s subpoenas unlawful and urged Republicans to
“shut this fake investigation down.”
Executive Order on the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities
(https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/10/11/executive-order-on-the-white-house-initiative-on-advancing-educational-equity-excellence-and-economic-opportunity-for-native-americans-and-strengthening-tribal-colleges-and-universities/)
Native America Calling:
The complex path to home ownership on tribal land
Your National Electronic Talking Circle
“Tribal members hoping to purchase a home on tribal land often face a gauntlet of red tape, delays and complicated legal arrangements. Even if they manage to satisfy all the requirements, they may still be unable to get a mortgage from a standard lender. In addition, some tribal members who benefited from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Indian Home Loan Guaranteed Program are coming up against constraints.”
(https://www.indianz.com/News/2021/10/15/native-america-calling-the-complex-path-to-home-ownership-on-tribal-land/)
Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at National Congress of American Indians #NCAAnnual21
United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry
addresses the National Congress of American Indians on October 13, 2021.
Cary Morin
Millennium Stage (October 14, 2021)
“Described as “one of the best acoustic pickers on the scene today,” Cary Morin brings together the great musical traditions of America like no other. With deft fingerstyle guitar and vocals that alternately convey melodic elation and gritty world-weariness, Morin crafts an inimitable style often characterized as roots-infused Native Americana with hints of bluegrass, folk, blues, and rock.”
Morin is a citizen of the Crow Tribe.
(Indianz.com)
Valley sounds
are the long broad tongue.
Mountain colors
are no other than the unconditioned body.
(Longman Dongpo)
—A very happy friday to all !!
And to you! Keep ’em coming.
Dōgen praised Su Dongpo declaring that he studied the way of the dragons. Here’s the other half
of the poem (谿声山色):
Eighty-four thousand verses are heard
through the night.
What can I say
about this in the future.
New post.