Members of the audience cheer as President Obama delivers remarks on the American Jobs Act at Manchester Central High School, N.H., Nov. 22
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden talk with First Lady Michelle Obama in the Oval Office, Nov. 21
President Obama greets people following a ceremony to honor the French and American Alliance, at a World War I Memorial at the Hotel de Ville in Cannes, France, Nov. 4
President Obama says goodbye to students after a visit to the Yeadon Regional Head Start Center in Yeadon, Pa., Nov. 8
President Obama talks with Chief of Staff Bill Daley before the APEC CEO business summit in Honolulu, Hawaii, Saturday, Nov. 12
President Obama has his picture taken with a member of the U.S. Navy on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson, Nov. 11
President Obama looks out a window of Air Force One during the flight from Canberra to Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17
Members of the Townson University football team take pictures of President Obama during halftime of the Oregon State vs Towson University basketball game in Towson, Md., Nov. 26
And from Lawrence Jackson:
First Lady Michelle Obama walks with children past the official White House Christmas Tree in the Blue Room, Nov. 30. Mrs. Obama welcomed military families to the White House for for the first viewing of the 2011 holiday decorations.
Steve Benen: …. as it turns out, Bush’s approval rating the summer before his re-election bid isn’t much different than President Obama’s current approval rating. Bush had a few months to see his support grow; Obama has a year.
And why did Bush’s support grow from the mid-40s to the low-50s? Chait argued, persuasively, that voters starting seeing the president “within the context of a partisan choice,” and decided they liked him more after taking a look at the wealthy Massachusetts challenger with an awkward personality and who was often accused of flip-flopping.
Ahem.
…. If Republicans were a popular party with a popular agenda, this would be a very different story. Likewise, if Obama were a poor campaigner facing a charismatic GOP frontrunner, I’d a different set of expectations. But I’ve seen a lot of Obama political obituaries, and at this point, none of them have proven persuasive to me.
Harold Pollack (Washington Monthly): ….. Many progressives – me, for instance – worry that OWS will promote destructive alienation from the hard and sustained work of conventional politics. If a sizeable chunk of progressive youth are passive in 2012, that is the functional equivalent of a Nader candidacy.
The best way to prevent this is to find an aspect of conventional politics that can genuinely excite and move these protesters into positive action that serves their own values and long-term goals …. Perhaps earnest substantive emails about health reform should do that – given the Affordable Care Act’s impact on millions of low-income people….
Ari Berman’s fantastic reporting describes Republican efforts across the country to establish subtle (or not-so-subtle) roadblocks to hinder voting among minorities, poor people, ex-felons, and the young … This is an obvious effort to turn the 2012 electorate into an older and whiter group that resembles the 2010 electorate rather than the 2008 electorate that brought Barack Obama to the White House.
…. Occupy Wall Street organizers: I believe you should resonate with this issue. GOP officials are trying to disenfranchise people like you: college students with university IDs not gun permits, young people and minority urban residents who don’t drive, and so on.
President Barack Obama talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a break at the G20 Summit in Cannes, France, Nov. 4. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Robert Shrum (The Week): The GOP’s desperate hunt for anyone but Mitt Romney – Herman Cain unravels. Rick Perry stumbles. And Republicans keep praying that someone will rescue them from the flip-flopping Romney.
… Maybe tea is a hallucinogen; maybe the GOP is demented – and it will nominate him (Cain) anyway. If that happened, it’s certain that President Obama would win by even more then he did in 2008.
….. He’s the latest in a procession of preposterous Republican candidates who have soared across the party’s firmament … The GOP’s primary voters have been relentlessly looking for Mr. Un-Romney…..
Alan Krueger (White House): Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but the pace of improvement is not fast enough.
Private sector payrolls increased by 104,000, and overall payroll employment rose by 80,000 in October. The unemployment rate edged down 0.1 percentage point to 9.0 percent, a level that remains unacceptably high.
Despite adverse shocks that have created headwinds for economic growth, the economy has added private sector jobs for 20 straight months, for a total of 2.8 million jobs over that period. We need faster economic growth to put more Americans back to work. Today’s report provides further evidence for why it is so important that Congress pass the President’s American Jobs Act ….
Timothy Egan (NYT): For a Republican Party that has spent the better part of its presidential campaign proving that most of its candidates are not smarter than a fifth grader, the real scandal around frontrunner-of-the-moment Herman Cain is not what he knows. It’s what he doesn’t know.
…. China, said Cain with his clueless urgency, is “trying to develop nuclear capability.” Anyone who is gobsmacked by this category five level of ignorance concerning a country that has had nuclear weapons for more than 45 years has not been paying attention. Cain makes Sarah Palin, with her eagle-eyed view of Russia from Alaska, sound like a Council of Foreign Relations scholar on a gasbag high.
The clowns have finally taken over the circus, and I mean this with all due respect to those who labor with painted faces and oversized shoes…..
Steve Benen: On the Senate floor yesterday afternoon, Senate Republicans killed a popular jobs bill, despite the fact that a majority of senators supported the legislation. But the public’s understanding of what transpired will be shaped by the media’s coverage…..
…. CNN’s headline, at least online, read, “Competing infrastructure spending measures fail in Senate.” Here’s the lede: “In a pair of votes aimed more at making political points than law, the Senate rejected competing Democratic and Republican proposals to boost construction of roadways and other infrastructure projects.”….
Politico’s report was even worse. The headline read, “Senate gridlock: Both parties block jobs bills.” And check out the lede: “Rival Democratic and Republican jobs bills failed in the Senate on Thursday, the latest sign of the partisan gridlock gripping Washington…..”.
No, no, a thousand times, no. This just isn’t what happened…..
President Barack Obama walks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the G20 Working Dinner on Global Governance in Cannes, France, Nov. 3, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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Morning birthday girls, morning everyone
Will catch up properly later, busy busy busy for the next couple of hours. Chat away 😉
…… with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G20 Summit in Cannes, France
….with Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard
….. greeting Canada PM Stephen Harper as Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono looks on
…. with British PM David Cameron
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If, like me, you’re struggling to understand exactly what’s going with Greece, Kevin Drum has a brilliant post about it all at Mother Jones (here) – as recommended by Steve Benen
AP: Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, a hopeful sign that the job market might be picking up.
The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 397,000, the lowest level in five weeks. It’s only the third time since April that applications have fallen below 400,000.
Economists were encouraged by the drop, though they cautioned that the trend would have to persist to signal real improvement.
Seriously, the former-hardcore-right-wing-Republican-and-now-Queen-of-the-Professional-Left is becoming a parody of herself.
“I’m in sun-and-creativity-soaked Cannes but can’t stop thinking of Kabul……”
True, they’re so similar:
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PS I was in Cannes once and never have I visited a more hideous place on earth – a Disneyland for classless tosspots like the Huffy woman. Full of vacuous freaks armed with Louis Vuitton handbags and chihuahuas.
The beach was covered in dog shit – and that was the most pleasant part of the hell-hole.
Among the happier moments in my life was the moment I left Cannes. Honest.
The Obama Diary 
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