First Lady Michelle Obama speaks on food marketing to children at an event in the State Dinning Room at the White House
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In case you missed it in the comments today, a beautiful story from Dakota:
Good Afternoon TOD Family.
Off the topic at hand, but I have been trying to post this uplifting story all day keep getting interrupted by less important things like…work and a stupid fire drill with a loudly blasting horn, that SOME folks didn’t seem to think applied to them!!! Anyway, now that’s off my chest…here’s my story.
I work for a hospice company and one of duties is supervising home health aides. All of our aides must be certified and are paid at a higher rate, so the good news about minimum wage and overtime protection doesn’t really apply to them. Whenever we get a new client, an entire team is at their disposal, aides, doctor, nurses, volunteers if desired, social worker and a chaplin. We actually have two chaplins.
A couple of weeks ago, one of our chaplins, whose office is right next to mine put up a photo of President Obama. It’s the one in front of the capitol building when he was campaigning in 2008. Now, I was surprised at this because not only are we not supposed to to talk politics in the office (HA! Just about all of the people who work in this office are PBO supporters), but the owners of our company are religious right-wingers who have held fundraisers for our rethug governor. Now to be fair, the CEO has always been very supportive of me and I do appreciate that. Last Wednesday, she came to our office because we finally had this stupid audit that they’ve been driving us nuts with it for a year! Well, wouldn’t ya know she parks her stuff right in the chaplin’s office right in front of this 8×10 photo of the President on her desk! I thought to myself, “Oh, shit,” but nothing was said.
Turns out that the chaplin, who is female, was instrumental in starting a hospice in Honolulu, HI…the very same one that took care of the President’s grandmother. The photo is a copy of one that was given to the hospice aide and signed by the President. The inscription reads “Thank you for taking such good care of my Tutu. Barack Obama.” Someone at the hospice, sent the photo to the chaplin a long time ago, but she decided she was going bring it into the office and keep it on her desk. Her feeling is that this is was a wonderful tribute to hospice workers and that no one would dare part their lips to complain and no one has. I really like this chaplin…she’s a sweetheart.
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We’ll catch up with newsie stuff in the morning – for now, chat away!
PS Huuuuuuge thanks again to LL for today’s wonderful post.
Remember I was majestically kind enough earlier today (this post) to share with you one of my spectacular photos from the last inauguration?
Some of you were rude enough to refer to it as the ‘horse manure’ pic, which said a whole more about you than my masterly eye for a photograph.
Any way, I captioned it:
“Eat your heart out, Scout Tufankjian”
Some of you might be aware that I worship the ground Scout Tufankjian carries her cameras on (if you haven’t bought this book you should be ashamed), she’s the most brilliant photographer on planet earth – and did gorgeous work again on the 2012 campaign (I’ve posted lots of her photos, you can see more here)
So, where were we?
Yes, my ‘horse manure’ pic that SO many of you failed to appreciate?
Well.
Look what I just found in pending:
And yes, I checked, it’s HER!
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Scout Tufankjian? I LOVE you! 😆
The rest of you? Like Scout, please respect my horse manure pics in future, okay?
A million apologies to anyone who has been flooded with ‘comment notification’ emails today from the blog.
For some spectacularly stupid reason – although it might be a bug – WordPress has changed the default setting so that people receive these notifications unless they uncheck the option below the comment form (see the red arrow above).
There’s a discussion about the problem at the WordPress support forum today – here
I’m hoping they’ll fix this very soon, but for now just make sure you uncheck that box when you’re commenting.
Sorry again everyone, it’s been infuriating for you all.
PS And a million more sorries for not replying yet to people who contacted me about it, it’s been another one of those days.
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Saturday
10:35: PBO and Michelle Obama depart the White House
12:00: Arrive in Columbus, Ohio
1:20: PBO and Michelle Obama deliver remarks at a campaign event at Ohio State University
2:55 Depart Columbus en route Richmond, Virginia
4:35 PBO and Michelle Obama deliver remarks at a campaign event at the Virginia Commonwealth University
5:55: Depart Richmond
6:50: Arrive at the White House
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You know, I’m kind of looking forward to tomorrow 😉
President Barack Obama talks on the phone with British Prime Minister David Cameron in the Oval Office, Feb. 13, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Tuesday: PBO and the Vice President will meet with Vice President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China at the White House.
Wednesday: PBO will travel to Master Lock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to continue to discuss his blueprint for an economy built to last based on American manufacturing and the importance of companies insourcing and investing in America. He will then travel to Los Angeles, California where he will attend campaign events. He will spend the night in Los Angeles.
Thursday: PBO will attend campaign events in Corona del Mar, California before traveling to San Francisco, California to attend campaign events. He will spend the night in San Francisco.
Friday: PBO will travel to the Seattle where he will continue to discuss his blueprint for an economy built to last. He will also attend campaign events in the Seattle area before returning to Washington, D.C. later in the evening.
PoliticalWire: Obama campaign manager Jim Messina rallied local volunteers in Arizona over the weekend by assuring them that Obama intends to compete in Arizona, according to the Arizona Republic.
Said Messina: “People said last time, ‘Oh, you can’t win Virginia,’ until we did. ‘You can’t win Florida,’ until we did. ‘You can never win North Carolina,’ until we did. And so a whole bunch of people are saying, ‘Can he win Arizona? Can he not win Arizona?’ The fact is you all are the secret weapon we have.”
The campaign will soon have four offices in the state.
Pew Research: Barack Obama now holds an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney in a general election matchup, and he has gained significant ground among independent voters. A month ago, 40% of independents said they would back Obama over Romney – today 51% say they would, while the number expressing support for Romney has slipped from 50% to 42%.
Paul Krugman: Mitt Romney has a gift for words – self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”
As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.
That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.
Can you pass on a great, big heartfelt “Thank you” to Pres Obama from me and my wife please? You see, it’s our daughters’ book he’s signing in that picture! She actually spoke up and asked if he could sign it, and he was nice enough to oblige :0)
We bought the book a year or two ago to inspire two young daughters of our own, and we quickly took it to her class when told he’d be visiting the school. Yes, we entertained the idea of him signing it, and thought “wouldn’t it be nice!”, but knew it was a long-shot. We especially never thought our little one would take the initiative like she did and ask him in front of everyone haha! So, anyway, we were thrilled and over the moon when everyone told us the news and especially how it came about with a little voice asking at the right time, in a big way.
Everyone was so thrilled as they talked about how gracious President Obama was, and we are still on cloud 9 ourselves after seeing pictures of him interacting with our daughter and her classmates/teachers! It’s an experience our family will never forget, and we plan to have those pictures in that signed book for a long time to come!
Thank you for such a wonderful experience President Obama! We know our daughter will cherish the memory of it the rest of her life.
~ Mark and Denise Rodriguez
President Obama tours the Children’s Laboratory School at Eastfield College, Mesquite, Texas, October 4
Spotted by Tally – a comment by ‘Tom’ at Steve Benen’s blog (here)
The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don’t see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot. We don’t see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how other perceive him.
First of all, we think that he understands himself as one of us. A progressive activist, heir to the radical and New Left movements most of us were raised in. He is not; I think that he understands himself (and certainly his real base understands him) as the first African American President. We’re thinking Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. We should be thinking about Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago. Washington was elected and immediately faced a solid wall of opposition from most white aldermen in the city. Washington understood his role as breaking down that wall of opposition and assembling a governing majority, which he finally did after his re-election. Unfortunately, he died shortly thereafter. By the way, one of Washington’s political strategists was David Axelrod.
How does Obama break the iron unity of the GOP opposition to assemble a governing majority in the US Congress?
If we progressives were not blinded by our own assumption that our history is the only history, we might see how Obama may be seeing his situation.
White progressives often think that African American elected officials are politically naive. We will give far more credit to Cornel West, who has never been elected to anything, than to an elected state senator, or even the President of the United States. We think that Obama does not understand the nature of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor, as though he has not sat across the table from them. He doesn’t understand how mean they are, we think.
Obama acts entirely within the tradition of mainstream African American political strategy and tactics. The epitome of that tradition was the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement, but goes back much further in time. It recognizes the inequality of power between whites and blacks. Number one: maintain your dignity. Number two: call your adversaries to the highest principles they hold. Number three: Seize the moral high ground and Number four: Win by winning over your adversaries, by revealing the contradiction between their own ideals and their actions. It is one way that a oppressed people struggle.
Obama has taken a seat at the negotiating table and said “There is no reason why we cannot work out solutions to our problems by acting like responsible adults. That is what people expect us to do and that is why we have entered into public service.” That is the moral high ground.
Honestly, I have been reminded more than once in the last few months of those brave college students sitting in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, back in the day. Obama sits at that table, like they did at the counter. Boehner and McConnell and Cantor clown around, mugging for the camera, competing to ritually humiliate Obama, to dump ketchup on his head.
I don’t think those students got their sandwiches the first day, but they won in the end.
Obama is winning. Democrats are uniting behind him, although some white progressives think that they could do the job better. Independents are flocking to him. Even some Republicans are getting disgusted with their Washington leaders. Obama is not telling us about lack of seriousness of the Congressional GOP; he is showing us the vivid contrast between what we expect of our leaders and their behavior. The last two and half years have been a revelation of the essential conflicts in our society and politics.
If white progressives understood much about the politics of the African American struggle in the United States, we would see Obama in the context of that struggle and understand him better. And you don’t have to be African American to know something about the history of the African American struggle. The books and the testimony is there. It’s not all freedom songs. But you have to be convinced that it is something that can teach you something you don’t already know.
Hi everyone, sorry for going all preachy on you, but after some of the comments on the blog today – which I have since deleted, but should have deleted much earlier (and I sincerely apologize for that) – I really need to clarify a couple of things.
Needless to say, everyone’s entitled to their own views, but there are some views I just don’t want here.
Just as I block people trying to post racist abuse here every day, I will also block anyone trying to post homophobic comments or who attempt to denigrate the gay community in any way. There are endless sites where people can go to express those opinions, this isn’t one of them.
I know there’s huge anger with the Choi wing of the LGBT movement and suspicion about its true agenda – if I shared my true feelings about the guy you would be shellshocked by my vulgarity – but I’d guess every equal rights movement in history had its obnoxious characters. It didn’t make the cause any less just.
And we all know that Choi & Co represent no one but themselves and their attention-seeking egos, they just make the loudest noise – so, naturally, the MSM can’t get enough of them, to the point where you’d imagine they represented the entire movement. They don’t.
Meanwhile, the true voices of the LGBT movement get on with their work. Remember, the Human Rights Campaign (America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve LGBT equality) endorsed the President for 2012 – “The decision was made based on the President’s demonstrated commitment to LGBT equality and his record of accomplishment, from major legislative victories to critical administrative reforms.”
Choi and his cheerleaders want to create division and ill-will, that’s just how they work, so they paint the President and his supporters as homophobes in an attempt to widen those divisions. It’s their only hope of extending their 15 minutes of fame.
Rachel Maddow’s blatant Choi-like dishonesty last night heightened feelings even more today, but almost all of you refused to take the bait and simply restated your support for LGBT rights. And that’s what really drives Choi & Co crazy, when their own bigotry isn’t mirrored by supporters of President Obama.
So, for what it’s worth, this entirely insignificant speck in cyberspace supports – 100% – gay rights, and no amount of venom spewed by Choi & Co will ever change that.
So, just to repeat, if you want to post homophobic comments, this is most certainly not the place for you.
President Obama greets a little girl following his remarks during the Irish celebration at College Green in Dublin, Ireland, May 23
President Obama greets Hugh Hills, 85, in front of his home in Joplin, Mo., May 29. Hills hid in a closet during the tornado, which destroyed the second floor and half the first floor of his house
President Obama consoles a woman at the Joplin Community Memorial Service at Missouri Southern University, May 29.
President Obama and British PM David Cameron play table tennis with students at Globe Academy in London, May 24
President Barack Obama walks around the grounds of Buckingham Palace in London, England, May 24
President Barack Obama talks with pub-goers as First Lady Michelle Obama draws a pint at Ollie Hayes pub in Moneygall, Ireland, May 23
Please don’t let Bo ever see this photo: David Cameron introduces President Obama to Larry the cat at 10 Downing Street in London, May 25
First Lady Michelle Obama greets soccer star David Beckham at a dinner in honor of Queen Elizabeth II at Winfield House in London, May 25
Lots of new White House photos released today – see here
A very, very, very big thank you again to Henry VIII (!) for visiting us today (here) – thrilled to have you here, Mr Healy!
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Bye bye Muppets, hello the Living Dead…..
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Worried about Huntsman?
Nate Silver: …. polling worse than Mr. Gingrich was Mr. Huntsman. About half of the views Republicans expressed about Mr. Huntsman were negative, producing an Unacceptably Index of 51 percent.
The Obama Diary 
The President and First Lady’s Day
Tags: business, children, comment, dakota, food, Michelle, Obama, photos, President, remarks, roundtable, text, video
Text of the President’s remarks here
…. introduced by Boeing CEO James McNerney
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Text of the First Lady’s remarks here
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks on food marketing to children at an event in the State Dinning Room at the White House
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In case you missed it in the comments today, a beautiful story from Dakota:
Good Afternoon TOD Family.
Off the topic at hand, but I have been trying to post this uplifting story all day keep getting interrupted by less important things like…work and a stupid fire drill with a loudly blasting horn, that SOME folks didn’t seem to think applied to them!!! Anyway, now that’s off my chest…here’s my story.
I work for a hospice company and one of duties is supervising home health aides. All of our aides must be certified and are paid at a higher rate, so the good news about minimum wage and overtime protection doesn’t really apply to them. Whenever we get a new client, an entire team is at their disposal, aides, doctor, nurses, volunteers if desired, social worker and a chaplin. We actually have two chaplins.
A couple of weeks ago, one of our chaplins, whose office is right next to mine put up a photo of President Obama. It’s the one in front of the capitol building when he was campaigning in 2008. Now, I was surprised at this because not only are we not supposed to to talk politics in the office (HA! Just about all of the people who work in this office are PBO supporters), but the owners of our company are religious right-wingers who have held fundraisers for our rethug governor. Now to be fair, the CEO has always been very supportive of me and I do appreciate that. Last Wednesday, she came to our office because we finally had this stupid audit that they’ve been driving us nuts with it for a year! Well, wouldn’t ya know she parks her stuff right in the chaplin’s office right in front of this 8×10 photo of the President on her desk! I thought to myself, “Oh, shit,” but nothing was said.
Turns out that the chaplin, who is female, was instrumental in starting a hospice in Honolulu, HI…the very same one that took care of the President’s grandmother. The photo is a copy of one that was given to the hospice aide and signed by the President. The inscription reads “Thank you for taking such good care of my Tutu. Barack Obama.” Someone at the hospice, sent the photo to the chaplin a long time ago, but she decided she was going bring it into the office and keep it on her desk. Her feeling is that this is was a wonderful tribute to hospice workers and that no one would dare part their lips to complain and no one has. I really like this chaplin…she’s a sweetheart.
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We’ll catch up with newsie stuff in the morning – for now, chat away!
PS Huuuuuuge thanks again to LL for today’s wonderful post.