tune-time

Jason Mraz at an LA fundraiser for the President, April 2011 (more here) – the sound doesn’t start working til 10 seconds in, hang in there 😉

los angeles

President Obama at a Gen44 fundraiser event at Sony Studios in Los Angeles, April 21

….at the Gen44 fundraiser event at Sony Studios

the time 100

Professor David Kennedy: “We remain a young nation,” Barack Obama said in 2009, but he added an unsettling admonition that “in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.” No passage in his Inaugural Address more vividly reflected the President’s vision of his country and his times or more accurately foreshadowed the vexations that were to beset his leadership.

Like FDR before him, Obama, 49, has looked beyond the near horizon. He has paid the political price of setting far-visioned initiatives on health care and financial reform ahead of short-term relief. And he has tried to persuade his countrymen to shed some of their youthful illusions: to forsake the frontiersman’s faith in unbridled individualism for a recognition of the complex interdependencies of modern life, to replace the rebel’s fear of government with the citizen’s trust that government of the people and by the people is for the people too, to stop assuming that Santa Claus will give us cheap energy forever and the Easter Bunny will pay our bills. Whatever the near term holds, history is likely to record that Obama set the country on the path to a future with fewer illusions.

Kennedy is a professor of history at Stanford University

Rahm Emanuel: The partnership between any President and Vice President is like a shotgun wedding: Sometimes it works well. Most of the time, it does not. But the relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden is as successful a public partnership as I have ever seen.

They began as rival politicians who merged to form a ticket, which is not a prescription for harmony and close cooperation. But in my two years in the White House, I saw these onetime rivals become solid allies and then close friends. I saw a deep bond of trust grow between them, forged in a crucible of crisis.

Biden, 68, has been a wise counselor – unfailingly frank with the President behind closed doors and unwaveringly loyal on the public stage.

With 36 years of experience in the U.S. Senate and a wealth of relationships and insight, Biden has been an invaluable lieutenant on a wide variety of issues. And the President has trusted him with some of the most critical assignments, from the $787 billion Recovery Act to the transition in Iraq.

This is one shotgun wedding that works.

Jamie Oliver: Declaring herself “first mom,” Michelle Obama got right to work on the defining issues of her children’s generation: obesity and improving the health of America’s kids.

Her Let’s Move campaign put obesity in the headlines in part because Americans under 25 are the first generation expected to live shorter lives than their parents because of diet-related illnesses. But Obama, 47, urged people to get up and do something. She convinced her husband to establish America’s first Childhood Obesity Task Force…..

She’s encouraging mayors around the country to embrace obesity-prevention programs. And perhaps most incredibly, she’s had frank and challenging dialogues with some of America’s largest corporations and persuaded them to change their business practices for the sake of the children.

While she knows none of these changes are easy, she’s stood firm in her conviction that if we all just eat better and move more, then we can fight obesity. For her inspirational work, I salute First Lady Michelle Obama – a true revolutionary.

President Obama: The violence in Tucson earlier this year was made all the more shocking by the quintessentially American scene that it shattered: folks of different backgrounds yet part of the same community gathering to share their hopes and ask questions of their elected representative. To put it simply, they came to do the daily work of democracy.

Before that morning, Gabrielle Giffords may not have been a household name. But the reason she has long been admired by people of all political stripes is that she embodies the best of what public service should be: hard work and fair play, hope and resilience, a willingness to listen and a determination to do your best in a busy world. As hard a battle as Giffords, 40, now fights every day, she’s got a strong partner in her husband Mark Kelly, who visits her daily while training to command the space shuttle Endeavour. And she’s got the prayers of a nation rooting for her, a model of civility and courage and unity — a needed voice that cannot return soon enough.

****

Thank you Tommy 😉

joining forces in colorado

First lady Michelle Obama and Dr Jill Biden at Fountain-Ft. Carson High School, April, 14, speaking about the need for advanced placement courses in math and science at schools serving military children

Denver Post: Michelle Obama says she knows that the lives of Colorado students with parents in the military aren’t easy.

But the first lady told hundreds of teens at Fountain-Fort Carson High School, “If you can get through this, you can get through anything.”

Obama visited the school near Fort Carson school along with Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, and “MythBusters” stars Jamie Hyneman and Grant Imahara.

They were there to promote the “Joining Forces” campaign to support the families of military personnel and a campaign by the National Math and Science Initiative to promote advanced-placement classes, especially for students from military families.

A panel of students competed with a panel of parents in a math and science contest, with the first lady and Biden reading the questions.

Discovery channel’s Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman advises students of a correct answer during a competition against their parents at Fountain-Fort Carson High School

rofl

Vice President Joe Biden, joined by daughter Ashley Biden, left, wife Dr. Jill Biden, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, react to a joke made by performing artist Jamie Foxx during “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House,” Feb. 24, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

New Pete Souza and Samantha Appleton photos released today – see here

encore!

(A nice report from ABC on last night’s Motown concert at the White House)

motown, take a bow

From left, Jamie Foxx, Nick Jonas, Seal and John Legend perform a medley during a tribute to Motown hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, February 24

Berry Gordy

Seal

Michelle Obama and Jill Biden

See 14:10 – hey, who said the President couldn’t dance?

excellent!

Motown is coming to the White House… President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will honor Black History Month by inviting a group of music legends and other artists to the White House for “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House.”

The concert, scheduled for Feb. 24, will feature performances by Smokey Robinson, Natasha Bedingfield, Sheryl Crow, Jamie Foxx, Gloriana, Nick Jonas, Ledisi, John Legend, Amber Riley, Mark Salling, Seal and Jordin Sparks.

Greg Phillinganes will serve as the evening’s music director. The concert will air on PBS stations on March 1.

A year ago:

about that enthusiasm gap…

Today’s crowd in California? 37,500

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President Barack Obama appears at a Moving America Forward rally at the University of Southern California on October 22

hey, a fair and balanced foxx!

President Barack Obama greets actor Jamie Foxx at a campaign rally for Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in Los Angeles, California, October 22

Remember?

🙂