I want to share this inspiring book about the events leading up to the 1960 election, from Dr. King's imprisonment to student activism in Atlanta to JFK's campaign. It's a story we can all learn from—a story of overlooked heroes and the power each of us has to create change. pic.twitter.com/yIaNJpRq7M
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 19, 2021
Posts Tagged ‘jfk
21
Jul
15
The President’s Day
President Barack Obama waves to staff and journalists as he departs the White House
President Barack Obama speaks at the 116th National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) at the David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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President Barack Obama arrives at John. F. Kennedy airport in New York. President Obama is in New York for a taping of “The Daily Show” and a private fundraiser
Pete Souza: President Obama talks with Jon Stewart between segments of The Daily Show.
The President and First Lady leaving the White House this morning
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@dougmillsnyt: President Obama walks from the Oval Office to make a statement about the Syria airstrikes
President Obama makes a statement on recent U.S. and allied airstrikes against ISIS in Syria
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Text of the President’s remarks here
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President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depart the White House to New York for the United Nations General Assembly
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama greet people after arriving at JFK International Airport
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@BarackObama: Retweet if you agree. #ActOnClimate
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Text of the President’s remarks here
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President Obama addresses the Climate Summit at the United Nations General Assembly
President Obama is greeted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
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@petesouza: Presidents Obama and Clinton backstage at the Clinton Global Initiative
President Obama speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York
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Text of the President’s remarks here
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President Obama and senior advisers meet with representatives from the five Arab countries plus Iraq who have participated in air strikes against ISIS in Syria in New York City
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Carolyn:
Also remember how that picture became one of the biggest jokes and travesties of his term. Maybe a short term positive, but after a month, people knew that was a lie. Part of his downfall later, I think.
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Cindy:
Happy Friday Carolyn,
I am so convinced that the main reason, the repukes and MSM want a picture of President Obama at the border, is to place it next to Bush “real” Katrina moment (Bush in plane looking down on those who were suffering), and run with some eye catching headline;
Bush/Obama Katrina moment and they both did nothing.
Of course they would photoshop the picture by inserting crying babies and mothers at the border with the President standing there.
They want to redeem Bush by comparing the President to him; hoping that a picture of President Obama at the border would destroy him.
“AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN” and they are losing their minds because they can’t manipulate him to do it.
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Lovepolitics2008:
“They want to redeem Bush”… THIS.
There’s no question that republicans are never able to deal with not being in power. The minute a democrat ascends to the Oval Office, they begin the campaign to destroy him. Democrats, who are more mature politically, and are not authoritarians, don’t do the same.
But in the case of Barack Obama, we’ve seen the resentment and the hate reach new levels. Race is a factor of course. But another one is that republicans have been SO HUMILIATED by the Bush presidency, they want Bush’s successor to be humiliated to. To leave office with approval numbers as low as Bush’s numbers were. Just so they can comfort themselves in the fact that it’s not just republican presidents who can be rejected by the population.
I’ll go further. I wonder if unconsciously, the pundit class wants the same thing. Let me explain…
They’re so obsessed by the political game, they seem to be totally uninterested by policies and their effects on the american people. They have big salaries and don’t need any help; they absolutely don’t CARE about what happens to people. So the fact that Barack Obama is working to help people DOESN’T IMPRESS them at all. The fact that Barack Obama is working to repair the damage of the Bush years DOESN’T IMPRESS them at all. Since they don’t care, the integrity, empathy, hard work of this president doesn’t generate in them positive sentiments. They judge him, SOLELY, on the way he plays the political game and on the way he interacts with them, the “media stars”. They would like him if he was friendly towards them, if he flattered their egos, if he made them feel important.
So the media class doesn’t like the president. And since they want interesting “narratives”, since they’re entertained by watching a politician’s numbers go up and down, I can’t help feel that deep down inside, they wish they’ll be able to tell the story of a rock-star politician who ascended to the Presidency after an historical, exciting campaign… but left office with as low approval numbers as his republican predecessor.
(And of course, let’s not forget JEALOUSY. They don’t want to feel inferior to this very brilliant president who is , on top of everything, a better WRITER than all of them.)
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Cindy:
You nailed it Lovepolitics2008,
The other side to this ugliness, the raw side of this hate; truth be told – to have a “black man” running this country has rocked their world.
What they are operating from, is the premise of; “Let’s put this N______ in his place.” Nothing else would spew this kind of hatred, than an African American rising to the “TOP.” That is why we have continually heard the words; uppity, arrogant, who does he think he is, cocky etc.
Their behavior reminds me of the scene from Malcolm X, when Malcolm and the people were waiting outside of the hospital, after the police had beaten a black man. When they received word that he was going to live, the Police Chief said; this is too much power for one man to have.
They lost their ruling power to President Obama – so sue him to put him in his place. HA!
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Arriving in New York
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Text of the President’s remarks here
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President Obama leads Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary Nominee Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Vice President Biden from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden
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First Lady Michelle Obama, with Dr Jill Biden, applauds the crowd as they return the sentiment during an event for caregivers of veterans in the East Room of the White House. The First Lady and Dr Biden announced new steps by private and public sector organizations to help ease the heavy burden on a vital but largely invisible workforce.
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Leaving the White House
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Arriving at JFK
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President Obama shakes hands with Rev. Al Sharpton as he arrives to speak at the National Action Network conference
President Obama is greeted by Spike Lee and Rev Al Sharpton after speaking at the National Action Network
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20
Jan
14
Rise and Shine
Five Years Ago Today
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Today:
1:30 EST: The President and First Lady participate in a service project, Washington, DC area
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Washington Post: Martin Luther King Jr. And The Catalyst Of Change
MARTIN LUTHER King Jr. preached nonviolence, practiced it and led a great movement guided by its principles. Yet surely he knew, as did most of his followers, that what they were doing would lead to violence. One need only look at the old black-and-white photos of civil rights protests, at the hatred, scorn and, perhaps most important, fear on the faces of some of the white people there to confront the demonstrators to understand how such simple acts as sitting down in a bus or entering a restaurant, seeking the right to vote or go to a better school, could lead to the worst sorts of violence — a bitter truth that followed King to the day of his death.
Yet out of that violence came new understanding of a sort: People who had been all but invisible to much of the United States came to be seen through the newspapers and television as individual human beings : women and children being firehosed; war veterans returning home to be subjected to all the humiliations and restrictions of the time (or to be murdered, like Medgar Evers); polite young men trying to get a sandwich at a lunch counter; a dignified woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus; the children killed by a bomb in a Birmingham church. For many Americans, this marked the first time they had come face to face, or had allowed themselves to come face to face, with the cruelty of racial separation and oppression, a century after the official end of slavery.
More here
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John Blake: The Greatest MLK Speeches You Never Heard
‘Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community’ King’s fifth book was published in 1967 Why it’s important: This is King’s last — and most radical — book. By 1967, he was organizing a “Poor People’s Campaign,” a plan to dispatch an interracial army of poor people to occupy Washington and force the U.S. government to address poverty.
What he said: He takes on black nationalists who ridiculed nonviolence. He says the passage of civil rights laws is not enough. The country must institute a “massive, new national program” to attack poverty. He predicts the civil rights movement will go international as oppressed peoples in other countries adopt nonviolent tactics to combat America’s “economic colonialism.”
Signature lines: “White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change of the status quo. … This is a multiracial nation where all groups are dependent on each other. … There is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity.”
What others say: “I get so tired of people turning Dr. King into a dreamer,” says Doreen Loury, a sociology professor at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania, who says she was blown away by the book when she first read it in the 1960s. “They made him safe. He was a revolutionary.”
More here
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AP: MLK Discusses Kennedy In Rediscovered 1960 Tape
As the nation reflects on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., an audiotape of an interview with the civil rights leader discovered in a Tennessee attic sheds new light on a famous phone call John F. Kennedy made to King’s wife more than 50 years ago. Historians generally agree that Kennedy’s phone call to Coretta Scott King expressing concern over her husband’s arrest in October 1960 — and Robert Kennedy’s work behind the scenes to get King released — helped JFK win the White House that fall.
King himself, while appreciative, wasn’t as quick to credit the Kennedys alone with getting him out of jail, according to a previously unreleased portion of the interview with the civil rights leader days after Kennedy’s election. “The Kennedy family did have some part … in the release,” King says in the recording, which was discovered in 2012. “But I must make it clear that many other forces worked to bring it about also.”
“I think Dr. King was aware in the tape that he probably did more for John F. Kennedy than perhaps John F. Kennedy did for him,” said Keya Morgan, a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts. John Kennedy didn’t actually commit to the movement until a few months before his assassination when civil rights leader Medgar Evers was gunned down by a Klansman outside his Jackson, Miss., home just after midnight on June 12, 1963. “There were a lot of black folks who … weren’t fully committed to his campaign,” said Winbush, who is also a historian and psychologist. “That call he made to Coretta moved black folks.”
More here
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Martin Luther King Jr., registering African-Americans to vote in Greenwood, Miss. on July 21, 1964
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Ned Resnikoff: Four Ways Martin Luther King Jr. Wanted To Battle Inequality
1. Ratify an economic bill of rights: In 1968, members of King’s premier civil rights group, the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), drafted a letter demanding “an economic and social bill of Rights” that would promise all citizens the right to a job, the right to an adequate education, and the right to a decent house, among others.
“It cannot take more than two centuries for it to occur to this country that there is no real right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for people condemned by the accident of their birth to an existence of hereditary economic and social misery,” wrote the letter’s drafters. While the SCLC was specifically concerned with the ways in which economic inequality perpetuates racial inequality, they made clear that the rights they proposed would apply to all citizens. It sounded radical at the time.
In fact, the effort echoed a proposal made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his 1944 State of the Union Address, when he called for a “second Bill of Rights,” to guarantee all citizens a “useful and remunerative job” and “adequate medical care.
More here
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ZDF German news interview with President Obama from Friday
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Steve Kornacki: US Attorney Inquiry Into Christie Widens
The New Jersey mayor who publicly claimed this weekend that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration tried to withhold hurricane relief funds met Sunday in private with the U.S. attorney for the state of New Jersey. “This afternoon I met with the U.S. Attorney’s office for several hours at their request and provided them with my journal and other documents,” Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said in a statement Sunday. “
As they pursue this investigation, I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project.”
Zimmer said Saturday in an interview with MSNBC that she would be willing to sign a sworn statement and testify under oath that she had been threatened by the governor’s staff to approve a development project or risk hurricane relief funding for her town of Hoboken, which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.
More here
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BBC: UN Invites Iran To Syria Peace Talks
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has invited Iran to take part in preliminary Syrian peace talks this week in Switzerland, an offer Tehran has accepted. Mr Ban said he had received assurances that Iran would play a positive role in securing a transitional government. The preliminary talks will open in Montreux on Wednesday and then continue in Geneva two days later.
Syria’s government and the main political opposition group earlier agreed to attend the meeting. The three-year conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people. An estimated two million people have fled the country and some 6.5 million have been internally displaced.
More here
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Love this:
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White House: Statement by NSC Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden on Ukraine
We are deeply concerned by the violence taking place today on the streets of Kyiv and urge all sides to immediately de-escalate the situation. The increasing tension in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the government failing to acknowledge the legitimate grievances of its people. Instead, it has moved to weaken the foundations of Ukraine’s democracy by criminalizing peaceful protest and stripping civil society and political opponents of key democratic protections under the law. We urge the Government of Ukraine to take steps that represent a better way forward for Ukraine, including repeal of the anti-democratic legislation signed into law in recent days, withdrawing the riot police from downtown Kyiv, and beginning a dialogue with the political opposition. From its first days, the Maidan movement has been defined by a spirit of non-violence and we support today’s call by opposition political leaders to reestablish that principle. The U.S. will continue to consider additional steps — including sanctions — in response to the use of violence.
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Finally got around to reading the New Republic article on Snowden, Greenwald and Assange – ironically written by a character who has ‘Obama Derangement’ issues himself.
Not sure there’s anything new in it, but the section on Snowden says it all about his agenda and motivation:
…. by the end of Bush’s second term, Snowden certainly held the president in low esteem. But not, apparently, his intelligence policies. Nor, it seems, was he drawn to insiders who exposed details of these programs. Quite the opposite: Snowden vilified leakers and defended covert intelligence ops.
In January 2009, Snowden lambasted The New York Times and its anonymous sources for exposing a secret Bush administration operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Such infuriating breaches had occurred “over and over and over again,” Snowden complained. The Times, he railed, was “like wikileaks” and deserved to go bankrupt; sources who leaked “classified shit” to the Times ought to “be shot in the balls.” When an online interlocutor suggested that it might be “ethical” to report “on the government’s intrigue,” Snowden replied emphatically: “VIOLATING NATIONAL SECURITY? No.” He explained, “that shit is classified for a reason.”
Surprise, surprise:
… nearly as soon as Obama took office, Snowden developed a deep aversion to the new president …. he became furious about Obama’s domestic policies on a variety of fronts. For example, he was offended by the possibility that the new president would revive a ban on assault weapons. “See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment,” Snowden wrote, in another chat. “Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.”
And this from the ‘progressive’ hero:
At the time the stimulus bill was being debated, Snowden also condemned Obama’s economic policies as part of a deliberate scheme “to devalue the currency absolutely as fast as theoretically possible.” (He favored Ron Paul’s call for the United States to return to the gold standard.) The social dislocations of the financial collapse bothered him not at all. “Almost everyone was self-employed prior to 1900,” he asserted. “Why is 12% employment [sic] so terrifying?” In another chat-room exchange, Snowden (TheTrueHOOHA) debated the merits of Social Security:
<TheTrueHOOHA> save money? cut this social security bullshit
<TheTrueHOOHA> Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine
….. Later in the same session, Snowden wrote that the elderly “wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day.”
What a classy guy.
Snowden’s disgruntlement with Obama, in other words, was fueled by a deep disdain for progressive policies …. Contrary to his claims, he seems to have become an anti-secrecy activist only after the White House was won by a liberal Democrat who, in most ways, represented everything that a right-wing Ron Paul admirer would have detested.
Full article here
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On This Day:
Jan. 20, 2009 – Pete Souza: “President-elect Barack Obama was about to walk out to take the oath of office. Backstage at the U.S. Capitol, he took one last look at his appearance in the mirror.”
17
Nov
13
Rise and Shine
On This Day: President Obama looks out a window of Air Force One during the flight from Canberra to Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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The Week Ahead:
Today: The First Family will attend the game between the University of Maryland and Oregon State University at College Park, Md
Monday: The President will attend meetings at the White House
Tuesday: Will deliver remarks at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council’s annual meeting
Wednesday: The President will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the First Lady will also attend
Thursday: The President will attend meetings at the White House
Friday: The President will host King Mohammed XI of Morocco at the White House
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Jump on the phone with President Obama this Monday. RSVP now: http://t.co/jUteVAkLsW
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 16, 2013
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Jason Sattler: SHOCKER: Obamacare Is Working Best In States That Aren’t Trying To Sabotage It
Of the 106,185 people who have completed an application for health insurance, nearly 75 percent came from 14 states and the District of Columbia that both set up their own exchanges and expanded Medicaid. Unsurprisingly, California and New York combined for the bulk of the enrollments, 51,769. But the most promising news from the Golden State wasn’t even included in this report.
Peter Lee, the executive director of Covered California, reported Wednesday that as of Tuesday, 60,000 Californians had signed up for insurance. Signups have increased to a rate of almost 2,500 enrollees per day in November. At that pace, the state could be expected to enroll 402,500 people by March 31 but Lee says that he expects to hit a goal of 500,000 to 700,000 people by then, which means he expects the pace to pick up by at least 640 people a day to over 3,000 enrollees.
Red Kentucky is the only state in the union that voted for Mitt Romney and set up its own exchange, thanks in large part to Democratic governor Steve Beshear. The state’s site signed up a total of 32,485 Kentuckians, with 5,586 enrolling in private plans, in its first month of operation. This reduces the state’s uninsured population —estimated at 640,000 — by just over 5 percent.
More here
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The Boston Globe: Obama, Clintons To Visit JFK Gravesite Wednesday
President Barack Obama will visit John F. Kennedy’s gravesite and honor two of Kennedy’s lasting initiatives as the nation observes the 50th anniversary of his assassination in the coming week. Obama and his wife, Michelle, will be accompanied by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, at a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday afternoon. Also that day, Obama will be joined by scores of prominent Americans who have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in paying tribute to Kennedy’s legacy.
Obama will present the award Wednesday to the 2013 recipients, including Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, the late astronaut Sally Ride, women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, baseball Hall of Famer Ernie Banks, country music singer Loretta Lynn and 10 others. On Wednesday evening, Obama plans a speech on Kennedy’s legacy of service with a dinner at the Smithsonian American History Museum attended by current and past recipients of the medal, including baseball’s Hank Aaron, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, singer Aretha Franklin, economist Alan Greenspan, activist Jesse Jackson and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, is to introduce Obama at the dinner.
More here
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Tara Culp-Ressler: Hurricane Katrina, The Obamacare Rollout, And Allowing Privilege To Shape Our Politics
On Friday, the media got swept up in an unhelpful comparison between the rocky Obamacare rollout and the botched clean-up efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina …
But …. there is one obvious point of comparison. It doesn’t have anything to do with the political career of the sitting president, though. It has to do with the privilege that continues to dominate the United States’ political priorities.
It’s about who is worth rescuing.
…. Intent on resisting Obamacare at every turn, Republican legislators in over 20 states have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving many of their low-income residents with no good options…. But the current discussion is centered on a relatively small group of people who do currently have insurance, but whose plans don’t meet the minimum standard for benefit requirements put forth by the health reform law.
…. If we must draw comparisons between Obamacare and previous national disasters, consider this one. As a collective society, we still haven’t really learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina – but not because of a broken website or a broken promise about keeping your plan. We haven’t figured out how to prioritize that Louisiana mother’s life.
Full post here
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The Salt Lake Tribune: Dying For Coverage: Utahn Lobbies To Expand Medicaid
Sherilyn Horrocks’ body is under siege. Her immune system is attacking her tissues and organs, causing her esophagus, stomach and liver to harden. “I’ll die of [systemic sclerosis] like my brother did,” she said. “It’s just a matter of time.” Hoping to buy more time, and quality of life, the 61-year-old career homemaker is dropping by Gov. Gary Herbert’s annual health summit on Thursday to try to persuade him to expand Medicaid.
She’s among 123,000 uninsured Utahns who would qualify for Medicaid under an optional expansion of the low-income health program through the Affordable Care Act. There is no cure for her autoimmune disease. “But there are medicines and procedures that would prolong my life if I could afford them,” she said. “I have a feeling I’m going to be one of those who falls through the cracks.”
Utah has yet to opt into an expansion, despite analyses showing it would bring billions in federal funding to the state during the next 10 years, create jobs and reduce the charity-care burden on hospitals. Republican legislators remain adamantly opposed, and Herbert is weighing the pros and cons of partial expansion scenarios to be discussed at Thursday’s summit.
More here
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Laura Rozen: Iran Nuclear Deal Close, US Officials Say
US negotiators say they feel they are close to finalizing a nuclear agreement with Iran for the first time in a decade. “For the first time in nearly a decade we are getting close to [reaching agreement on] the first step towards a comprehensive agreement that would stop Iran’s nuclear program from advancing, and put time on the clock to reach a negotiated agreement that addresses all of our concerns,” a senior U.S. administration official told journalists at a background briefing at the State Department Friday.
“I don’t know if we will get agreement,” in Geneva next week, the U.S. official said. “It’s quite possible we can. But there are tough issues to negotiate.” The reason the last meeting ended in Geneva at 1am last weekend was that Iran, after receiving the consensus P5+1 draft proposal only late in the evening of November 9th, “felt it needed to look at the document and come back to the negotiations.”
More here
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Charles Blow: Disrespect, Race, And Obama
In an interview with the BBC this week, Oprah Winfrey said of President Obama: “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs, in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he’s African-American.” With that remark, Winfrey touched on an issue that many Americans have wrestled with: To what extent does this president’s race animate those loyal to him and those opposed? Is race a primary motivator or a subordinate, more elusive one, tainting motivations but not driving them?
To some degree, the answers lie with the questioners. There are different perceptions of racial realities. What some see as slights, others see as innocent opposition. But there are some objective truths here. Racism is a virus that is growing clever at avoiding detection. Race consciousness is real. Racial assumptions and prejudices are real. And racism is real.
More here
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Michelle Carl: People Like Me
Jennifer Herrera and her family are always on the move. She and her husband, Fredy, enjoy hiking in the mountains near their Southern California home and cheering on their children in one of their many sports — golf, football, volleyball or basketball. She was glad she had insurance recently when her son badly cut his face during a basketball game. “It was off to the emergency room we go,” she recalls. “Obviously, I had to pay for some of it, but thank God I didn’t have to come up with that $3,000 [for the full cost of the visit].”
Her family has always had health insurance, mainly because of hearing the story of Jennifer’s grandmother and the effect that not having insurance had on the family. It was the late 1940s, and Ethel and Chuck Meyer were proud parents of their first child, Bill (Jennifer’s father). “[Ethel] was hanging the laundry one day and just all of a sudden collapsed,” Jennifer says. “She didn’t know why. She had been kind of tired but chalked it up to having an active child.” Ethel eventually learned she had polio, a debilitating virus that reached epidemic levels in the United States prior to the development of the polio vaccine in the 1950s.
More here
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https://twitter.com/PamelamarobiPam/status/401455438698258432
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Jamelle Bouie: No, The Rollout Of HealthCare.gov Is Nothing Like Hurricane Katrina
Right now, the problem with the website is that it can’t accommodate everyone who wants to buy health insurance. That is a serious issue, but not the worst mistake ever made by a president.By contrast, George W. Bush’s response to Katrina comes close. Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest storms ever to hit the United States. It killed more than 1,800 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes, caused billions of dollars in property damage, and nearly sank a major American city.
And the Bush administration’s response was criminally negligent, a basic failure of duty that should haunt everyone involved. Despite several days of memos and warnings to administration officials that Katrina would be a major storm, that the levees had been breached, that flooding had began, it took two days for President Bush—who was on vacation, spawning a series of photo-ops that would look awful in retrospect—to begin to organize the federal response.
More here
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Joshua DuBois: Anyone Who Counts Obama Out Hasn’t Reckoned On His Survival Skills
It’s been a week of football metaphors in politics. President Obama said this week that the administration “fumbled” the health care rollout. A lot of folks believe that this turnover is decisive, handing the ball to Republicans in Congress and opponents of health reform with the second half well underway. And now we’re starting to see frightened Democrats on the sidelines hovering over Obama like uneasy linemen, wondering if their QB has enough left in him to turn the game around.
Not me. I’ve seen this game–and this particular quarterback–far too many times before. And as sure as I know never to count out Peyton Manning when he’s down by a couple scores heading into the fourth quarter, I never bet against Obama when the press and pundits have declared game-over. It rarely, if ever, is–this guy knows how to win.
This is a president, and a country, who have been counted out more times than we remember, and bounced back in ways we quickly forget. The reality is, if we take the long view, we’ll see that our country has been on an upward trajectory over the last 5 years. The ball may have been fumbled, and momentum may be in the other direction. But if history tells us anything, it’s this: the smart money’s on the gray-haired, steady-handed guy in the White House, who has been down this field a few times before.
More here
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On This Day:
Embassy staff members listen to President Obama at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, Nov.17, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama tours the Forbidden City in Beijing, Nov. 17, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama is reflected in a window while touring the Forbidden City in Beijing, Nov. 17, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama watches a performance at a state dinner with President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 17, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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One of the most beautiful moments:
President Obama meets survivor Mary Lee after laying a wreath at the memorial of the USS Peary in Darwin, Nov 17, 2011. Mary was 9 at the time of the bombing by Japanese aircraft which resulted in the sinking of the Peary on February 19, 1942
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People react as President Obama walks by on his way to address the Australian Parliament at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Nov.17, 2011 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard greet members of the Royal Australian Air Force after delivering remarks on the U.S. and Australian Alliance, in Darwin, Australia, Nov.17, 2011 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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13
Jun
13
From JFK to PBO
This undated file photo provided by Rep. John Dingell’s office shows the congressman with President John F. Kennedy
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President Obama talks with Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., along with members of his family, in the Oval Office, June 13. Rep. Dingell is the longest-serving Member in the history of the United States Congress (Photo by Pete Souza)
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During a tribute to Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest serving Congressman in American history, Mary Wilson of the Supremes asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., and others, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, to join her onstage in a rendition of the hit song “Stop! In the Name of Love.” Hilarity ensued.
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5:05 PM EDT: President Obama Speaks at the LGBT Pride Month Celebration
by Jacquelineoboomer (@JOBoomr)
I’m confident some of my “political” involvement matches that of others, at least of my generation. (Okay, I don’t presume to say that it exactly matches, but, at the very least, it is representative.)
I started noticing national politics as a (part-Irish, Catholic) teenager in high school, when JFK came on the scene (even the nuns were happy) and I’d race home from school to watch his wonderful afternoon press conferences.
Being from the Northeast (where we and so many people in this vast country lived in a white, middle-class bubble), I also had the awful awakening in the ’60s to what for decades (outside of our bubble) had led up to the Civil Rights movement – and what was still going on, most specifically in the South, suddenly publicized on TV news programs – and suffered along with the nation when the best of the best leaders of “our time” were assassinated.
All of it cut me to the core, and left an impression on my heart that remains today.
After that, many baby boomers set out to “change the world,” which, we are just finding out, we didn’t.
I never felt connected to politics after the ’60s … so many of us were crushed by all of the events that had occurred, at least one of which (the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby) we watched live on our black and white TVs. I remember thinking our nation was lost. At the very least, my generation was experiencing what later might have been called varying levels of human rights post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Obama Diary 
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