Remembering

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama walk back to the White House after joining members of the White House staff during a moment of silence to mark the 11th anniversary of the Sept 11th

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President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta observe a moment of silence at the Pentagon

Rise and Shine

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama participate in a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House September 11, 2012

8:45: President Obama and Michelle Obama observe a moment of silence to mark the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks

White House live * CNN * CBS 1 * CBS 2

9:10: President Obama and Michelle Obama depart from the White House to the Pentagon Memorial

9:30: Attend September 11th Observance Ceremony

1:45: The President departs the White House en route Bethesda, Md.

2:15: Visits the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

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Morning everyone, I’ll post again later.

the longest day

Night everyone – thank you all for your kind words, and for being so civil on a difficult day. You’re seriously good people.

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A woman hugs President Barack Obama as he greets guests following a ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against the United States, at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

‘rebirth’

As part of the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Vice President Biden delivered remarks at a screening of the documentary REBIRTH for Washington, DC, area college students. REBIRTH is a full-length documentary which chronicles the lives of five people directly affected by the events on September 11th, 2001.

the laughs just keep on coming…..

CBS: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is considering a bid for the Republican nomination for president and could make an announcement soon…The conservative Weekly Standard cites “two reliable sources” who tell editor William Kristol that Giuliani sees parallels between his 1989 mayoral race loss and victory in the next election with his loss in 2008 and the current race.

…Kristol says this time Giuliani would go head to head with New Hampshire front-runner Mitt Romney and then try to garner enough electoral votes in delegate rich states like New York, New Jersey and California. “It seems implausible that Rudy Giuliani could win the nomination. But it’s an implausible year,” Kristol wrote.

morning everyone

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Rachael makes the same great point as Jonathan Freedland in the UK Guardian earlier this week: “…One former foreign minister who has seen the president up close believes that Bin Laden’s scalp will lead other world leaders to conclude that, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, “Obama may speak softly – but he carries a big stick”…”

Thank you Dorothy 😉

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Michael Tomasky (The Daily Beast): Ground Zero’s Politics Are Over – Obama’s low-key appearance at the Twin Towers site today has finally neutralized the area blatantly politicized by the GOP.

Without saying a single word, but in the simple act of showing up … silently laying a wreath, and respectfully speaking with dress-uniformed officers flanking him, Barack Obama managed to neutralize what has arguably been the most potent piece of Republican iconography of the last decade: its total political ownership of 9/11, and of Ground Zero itself.

….Starting today, they can’t use it anymore. How it must grate their cheese that it was Barack Obama – crypto-Kenyan, effete urbanite, paller-around-with-terrorists – who turned these tables! What’s been playing out in the four days since the killing of Osama bin Laden – the Republican insistence that Bush deserves credit too, the claim that torture must be given its due, and all the rest – is equivalent to, and about as charming as, a bully’s incredulity that a smaller but nimbler foe has bested him.

….Today’s appearance by Obama simply provides the symbolic capstone. It’s no wonder that Bush snappishly sees today’s event, according to a New York Daily News story, as an Obama “victory lap.” Ground Zero was his. Now it’s not. (Imagine the ceremonial orgiastics we’d probably be enduring right now if Bush or John McCain had brought OBL to justice.)

Full article here

Thank you LoriahR

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I know we’ve all had enough of yesterday’s man, Donald Chump, but LoriahR sent me a link to a really powerful piece by Etan Thomas on the CNN site:

Donald Trump’s most recent challenge to President Barack Obama took me back to my collegiate years at Syracuse University. I had studied for two weeks straight for a calculus class, harder than I had ever studied in my life. After I completed my exam, I was confident that all my hard work had paid off.

But the next day, my professor greeted me with accusations of cheating, saying three-fourths of the class had flunked. How could I possibly have managed to get a B minus without cheating?….

….The president should not have to prove anything to anyone. Yet, he has handled every unmerited insult with nothing but grace and class. He has risen above every act of insolence, and proved them all wrong….

….It is a sad situation that a man who has earned a degree from Columbia University, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, has been elected as president of the United States and received a Nobel Peace Prize has to continuously prove himself as a man worthy of respect. He simply shouldn’t have to.

Full piece here

Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic): ….What many white people fail to realize is that though Barack Obama and his family are unique to them, they are deeply familiar to black people. …we do live next door to them … We went to church and played in summer leagues with people like them. I went to college with people like them. This is not to slight Barack Obama’s truly remarkable story, nor the indispensable labor of the people who raised him…..

To see that country manifested in the White House is the sort of boon that you can’t really attach to statistics. But for those of us who are waging the fight against a crippling cynicism, who are urging our children on, who visit schools and begin our addresses with, “I remember when I was just like you,” the First Family is perhaps the greatest weapon in our arsenal.

….when broad sections of this country foolishly follow a carnival barker in the ugly tradition of attacking black citizenship rights, when pundits shriek that Obama’s successes are simply the result of the misguided largess of white people, they undermine our most intimate war. They undermine the notion that someone familiar to that kid on the corner could legitimately reach the highest levels of the country, that someone like that kid’s Aunt could be the First Lady. They undermine this country’s social contract, and the “hard work pays” message of my parents. And to that we object.

For if they will not take as legitimate a magna cum laude from their highest institutions, if they will not accept a man who tells black kids to cut off the video games and study, who accedes to their absurd requests one week, and slays their demons the next, who will they accept? Who among us would they ever believe?

Full article here

Thank you Meta

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Andrew Romano and Daniel Klaidman (Newsweek): ….the most obvious effect of Abbottabad is that it vindicates the president’s approach to the war on terrorism, and removes from the Republican arsenal the argument that he is a weak, naive, bumbling humanitarian. It is difficult to imagine the 2012 contenders questioning Obama’s commander-in-chief chops, as Republicans have done to Democrats for decades, and were hoping to do again. Why? Because that particular line of inquiry now gives the president a priceless opportunity to remind voters that he accomplished in two years what George W. Bush was unable to accomplish in eight. As rebuttals go, it’s a good one.

Less obvious is the fact that Abbottabad might also vindicate Obama’s broader approach to presidential leadership, which has always emphasized calculating, technocratic, goal-oriented tenacity over “Mission Accomplished” theatrics.

The problem with the Obama-Carter comparisons, which have been regurgitated by 2012 hopefuls such as Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty in recent months, is that they overlook the real-world results of Obama’s supposedly knock-kneed management: universal health care, Wall Street reform, a depression-averting stimulus package, the end of the Iraq War, and now, bin Laden’s head.

As much as Pawlenty & Co. might disagree with Obama’s policies, it’s hard to deny that the president has a knack for getting (most of) what he wants …. “The way Obama made this decision was very similar to way he makes domestic decisions,” says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “Gathering the info, talking it out, then making the most rational call.”

Full article here

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New York Post: A few months ago, 14-year-old Payton Wall, who lost her father on 9/11, bared her grief in a 1,500-word letter to President Obama. “I never thought he’d respond,” Payton said yesterday, after she was embraced by the president at Ground Zero following the wreath-laying ceremony. “I was so shocked when the White House called! It was all a dream come true.”

In the letter, which the Rumson, NJ, teen said is “too personal” to share with the public, she told Obama about her father, Glen Wall, who was an executive at Cantor Fitzgerald when terrorists attacked the Twin Towers.

On Monday, the day after Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs, the president was given his daily handful of letters from Americans to read, and Payton’s stood out, White House officials said.

…The next day, the White House called her mother, Diane – who didn’t even know Payton had written the letter, officials said. Obama invited Payton, her mother and her sister, Avery, to yesterday’s ceremony. Payton spent days practicing a strong handshake, but in the end Obama gave her a presidential bear hug.

Full article here

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NY Daily News: Christopher Cannizzaro was still in diapers when his firefighter father was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. And Thursday the 10-year-old wanted President Obama to know his daddy died a hero.

“I was talking to him about my dad and my necklace,” said the Staten Island fifth-grader, showing a small medallion with a photo of his father, Firefighter Brian Cannizzaro, in uniform in front of an American flag. “Then he said, ‘I feel bad for your dad.’ He was being really open to me about everything,” said Christopher, who greeted Obama with a fist bump.

The boy gave Obama a prayer card with his dad’s picture and the President put it in his pocket. “He said, ‘Thank you, it was truly an honor to receive this from you,'” Christopher said. “It made me feel great; it meant the world to me that he was talking to me.”

The 6-foot-1 leader of the free world stared the pint-size kid in the eyes and solicited his opinion about a subject that has captured the attention of the world. “He asked how I felt about Osama Bin Laden being dead,” the boy said. “I said he could have done something a little less harsh to him, but it was nice to just know that after what happened to my dad, this guy was killed, too.”….

(This made me smile: “I said he could have done something a little less harsh to him, but it was nice to just know that after what happened to my dad, this guy was killed, too.” Sweet.)

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morning

The children of embassy staff greet President Obama at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, Nov. 17, 2009 (Pete Souza)

USA Today: It’s largely a ceremonial day for President Obama, as he welcomes a wounded veterans bicycle ride to the White House (live here at 3:15). After that, Obama meets in the Oval Office with Prince Charles of Britain. Behind the scenes, Obama will be trying to make a tough decision: Whether to release gruesome photos of the deceased Osama bin Laden.

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CBS: A new CBS News/New York Times poll shows President Obama’s overall approval rating has jumped by an impressive 11 percentage points in the wake of the U.S. military mission which killed Osama bin Laden, and there is overwhelming support for how Mr. Obama handled the situation….

…The poll found that 57 percent of Americans generally approve of Mr. Obama in the wake of the raid in Pakistan. Two weeks ago, when bin Laden was still America’s most-wanted terrorist, the president’s overall approval rating was at 46 percent. A whopping 85 percent of those polled gave Mr. Obama high marks for his handling of the operation to find bin Laden.

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NYT: Support for President Obama has risen sharply following the killing of Osama bin Laden by American military forces in Pakistan, with a majority now approving of his overall job performance, as well as his handling of foreign policy, the war in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

…..The increase in Mr. Obama’s ratings came largely from Republicans and independents. Among independents, his approval rating increased 11 points from last month, to 52 percent, while among Republicans it rose 15 points, to 24 percent. Among Democrats, 86 percent supported his job performance, compared with 79 percent in April.

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Steve Benen: President Obama will travel to Lower Manhattan, visiting Ground Zero and meeting with families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Some on the right, including Fox News personalities, have argued that the president should bring George W. Bush along as a “nice gesture.”

As it turns out, Obama extended an invitation to his predecessor. Bush declined. …”President Bush will not be in attendance on Thursday,” said his spokesman, David Sherzer. “He appreciated the invite, but has chosen in his post-presidency to remain largely out of the spotlight. He continues to celebrate with Americans this important victory in the war on terror.”

….given that Obama was gracious enough to extend the invitation in the first place, maybe the political establishment can get past the whole “Obama’s a big meanie towards Bush” theme?

green day

First Lady Michelle Obama greets volunteers as she arrives to volunteer at a service project for the Vinson Hall Retirement Community in McClean, Virginia

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silence

President Barack Obama pauses during a moment of silence in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House at 8:46AM, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010, in remembrance of the time that the first plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

in memory

President Barack Obama hugs an unidentified woman as he greets family members of victims after speaking at the Pentagon Memorial, marking the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks