Pete Souza: With plane flying overhead, President Obama observes a moment of silence this morning at the time a plane struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
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All Times Eastern
11AM: President Obama receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
1PM: Press Secretary Josh Earnest holds the White House Briefing
4:10PM: President Obama meets with Bipartisan Congressional Leadership
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President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford
President Barack Obama delivers a statement on Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Ash Carter and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford at the White House. President Obama announced that 8,400 US troops will remain in Afghanistan into 2017 in light of the still “precarious” security situation in the war-ravaged country
President Barack Obama speaks at US Central Command (CentCom) at MacDill Air Force Base
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President Barack Obama sits next to Commander of Central Command Gen. Lloyd Austin III during in a briefing from top military leaders while at U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida
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"Osama bin Laden is no more. Because of you, the core al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan & Pakistan has been decimated" —Obama to our troops
President Barack Obama participates in a briefing from top military leaders while visiting U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base. From L-R are: United States Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Obama, Commander of Central Command Gen. Lloyd Austin III and U.S. Special Operations Commander Joseph Votel.
President Barack Obama greets members of the military upon his arrival at MacDill Air Force Base
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"In three months, our combat mission will be over in Afghanistan & our war in Afghanistan will come to a responsible end." —President Obama
President Barack Obama touches the spiked hair style of a child while visiting the Clarence Tinker elementary school children while at MacDill Air Force Base
Joseph E. Stiglitz (NYT): This election has rightly been characterized as one that will deeply affect the future direction of the country: Americans are being given a choice with potentially large consequences. One arena in which there are profound differences that has not been adequately debated is the future course of inequality.
…. Every other advanced country has recognized the right of everyone to access to health care, and extending access was central to President Obama’s health care reform. Romney and Ryan have criticized that reform, but have said nothing about how or whether they would ensure universal access. Most important, the macroeconomic consequences of the Romney-Ryan economic program would be devastating: growth would slow, unemployment would increase, and just as Americans would need the social protection of government more, the safety net would be weakened.
…. let no one be deceived: their tax policies will lead to even more inequality at the top, the continued hollowing out of the middle, and more poverty at the bottom. Worst of all, they will lead to a more divided society that endangers our future – our economy, our democracy and our sense of identity as a nation.
(Joseph E. Stiglitz, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a former chief economist of the World Bank, is University Professor at Columbia University)
Paul Krugman: Mitt Romney has been barnstorming the country, telling voters that he has a five-point plan to restore prosperity …. Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he would follow to make those things happen…..
Actually, if describing what you want to see happen without providing any specific policies to get us there constitutes a “plan,” I can easily come up with a one-point plan that trumps Mr. Romney any day. Here it is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a blissfully happy marriage. And a pony.
So Mr. Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic recovery through magic, inspiring business confidence through his personal awesomeness. But what about the man he wants to kick out of the White House?
…. Mr. Obama may not have an exciting economic plan, but, if he is re-elected, he will get to implement a health reform that is the biggest improvement in America’s safety net since Medicare. Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic plan at all, but he is determined not just to repeal Obamacare but to impose savage cuts in Medicaid. So never mind all those bullet points. Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6.
President Obama has his drivers license checked prior to casting his vote in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago
President Obama has a laugh when an election official’s cell phone rings …
Greeting people as he leaves a campaign office in Chicago (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)
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Eugene Robinson (Washington Post): This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity – and that’s one reason voters are so polarized. It’s about who we are and who we aspire to be.
President Obama enters the final days of the campaign with a substantial lead among women – about 11 points, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll – and enormous leads among Latinos and African Americans, the nation’s two largest minority groups. Mitt Romney leads among white voters, with an incredible 2-to-1 advantage among white men … it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.
When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.
…. Some of Obama’s opponents have tried to delegitimize his presidency because he doesn’t embody the America they once knew. He embodies the America of now.
Paul Krugman: …. If you’re new to this, there are two basic approaches to election analysis at this point. One is the campaign reporter style, full of impressionist reporting about who won the news cycle and who has “momentum”, whatever that means ….. The other is poll-based. And that mostly means state-level polls at this point: there are more of them, and we have an electoral-college system, not a popular-vote system.
The impressionistic style has been all about Romney on the rise, a narrative that is to a large part being fed by the Romney campaign itself. But the state-level polling doesn’t show it…..
NYT Editorial: …. For Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama’s decision to bail out the auto industry and his own rejection of it is proving to be an Electoral College challenge. Several states are also feeling the benefits of an improved economy. Obama campaign officials say that to win, Mr. Romney would have to pick off voters already committed to the president in states where Mr. Romney has never been ahead. “We think we maintain a lot more plausible pathways to 270 than Governor Romney, who we think has to essentially pull an inside straight,” said David Plouffe, the president’s chief strategist.
Those pathways exist because millions of voters still harbor doubts about Mitt Romney. He has apparently decided that in the final days of the campaign, he will do little to dispel them.
Washington Post: …. this is an interesting case in which Mitt Romney has taken two moments from the third presidential debate – both of which were faulted by fact checkers – and turned them into television ads. In both cases, Romney also misspoke, making his statements even less accurate. The campaign commercial for the “apology tour” selectively snips out Romney’s errors, but apparently it was impossible to clean up Romney’s error on the size of the Navy.
…. The net effect is to suggest Obama made those supposed apologies to Arabs, without actually saying so, because that would be incorrect. But even careful editing still does not fix the basic problem in the first place – there was no apology tour.
This ad also repeats the criticism that Obama has never visited Israel. As we have noted, only four of the last 11 presidents visited Israel during their presidency — and only two visited in their first term…
For doubling down on claims that have been repeatedly called out by fact checkers, even to the point of editing out the candidate’s misstatements, the Romney campaign earns Four Pinocchios.
Adam Serwer (Mother Jones): GOP’s Benghazi Smoking Gun Goes Up in Smoke …. When a set of State Department emails were released Wednesday, one reporting that a local Islamist militia had claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, conservatives thought they had the smoking gun that the Obama administration had lied about what had occurred.
…. There’s only one problem — well, actually, there are many, but one big one: The email appears to have been incorrect…..
….. in the future it’s a good idea to remember that just because someone posts something on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Even better: Just because someone said someone posted something on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s true. Even if you really, really want it to be.
First Lady Michelle Obama hugs Betsy (L), age 5, and Sophia, age 7, children of Louisiana Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-LA), as she helps pack Healthy Lifestyle Kits for District of Columbia area children at a Congressional service event at the Kennedy Recreation Center in Washington on June 8, 2010. UPI/Alexis C. Glenn
President Barack Obama talks with Mable Harvey, 102 from Washington, DC. , after a conversation with a small group of African American seniors and their grandchildren on the legacy of the civil rights movement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington Monday, Jan. 18, 2010.
……Obama made special note of two guests. “Mr. Joseph Harvey is 105, and Ms. Mabel Harvey here is the spry young one at 102,” Obama said. “And Ms. Harvey just now was whispering in my ear, as you guys were walking in, that this must be the Lord’s doing, because we’ve come a mighty long way.”
The Obama Diary 
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