Happy Presidents’ Day, 44!

The Look

Quite possibly the look that made Putin do what he was told.

Chat away!

Inauguration Day, Part 8

Watching Inauguration Day in Times Square

Maddow Blog – thank you DesertFlower

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Coming up:

2:40: Inaugural Parade – Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues to the White House

3:45: Parade Review, White House

8:45: Commander-in-Chief’s Inaugural Ball

9:10: The Inaugural Ball

Live streaming: C-Span * CBS * CNN

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Hey everyone, I added videos and photos to most of the posts below, in case you missed them – more soon. (More photos in all the post comments too)

Heads Up: President Obama in Nashua, NH

2:0: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign rally at Elm Street Middle School, Nashua

Livestream

C-Span * CBS 1 * CBS 2 * CNN

Streaming has started at CBS

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President Obama at the Teamsters Union Local 633 in Manchester, New Hampshire, Oct 27 (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

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Florida today (Peter Bosch/Miami Herald)

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@BarackObama

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Thank you Jaznote – your five-year-old son is the cutest ever!

on the job

President Obama boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base en route to Columbus, Ohio where he will speak on the American Jobs Act at Fort Hayes Arts and Academic High School

the texas two-step

President Obama walks from the Oval Office to Marine One at the White House, May 10. The President visits Texas today where he will deliver a speech on the immigration system.

‘obama’s rivals now look like lilliputians to his gulliver’

Jonathan Freedland (The UK Guardian): Last week, when Barack Obama released his birth certificate to silence those who had long questioned his American identity, he explained that he did not normally respond to such nonsense because “you know, I’ve got other things to do”. Now we know that those “other things” included meticulous planning for an event that could well transform his presidency, reshaping both the way he is seen and the foreign policy he pursues.

… the success of the operation in Abbottabad now makes Obama’s rivals look small indeed, Lilliputians chasing wild fantasies while Gulliver deals with the things that matter. He has rendered even more laughable Donald Trump’s declaration that “I feel proud of myself” for flushing out the proof of Obama’s Hawaiian birth. The president has shown what a true achievement looks like.

For, like it or not, no trophy mattered more to American public opinion … Obama’s role in slaying the dragon may not make him a national hero, but it will take a special kind of stupidity for Republicans to question his patriotism now.

The killing in Pakistan will bury another criticism, rarely articulated explicitly: the suggestion that Obama was somehow insufficiently tough, insufficiently macho, to be America’s commander-in-chief … Crude though it may be, Obama just passed that test with flying colours of red, white and blue.

He did it, though, his own way … he avoided the crass cowboy talk that was a hallmark of the previous administration: the official statement of Saddam’s capture began with the words “We got him”. Obama’s style was, by contrast, measured and steady, recalling 9/11 and speaking movingly of the images of “that September day” that the world did not see, starting with “The empty seat at the dinner table”.

From now on Obama will be viewed slightly differently at home and abroad, his coolness understood to be unflappable and poker-faced, rather than chilly and professorial. One former foreign minister who has seen the president up close believes that Bin Laden’s scalp will lead other world leaders to conclude that, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, “Obama may speak softly – but he carries a big stick”…

…he has scored a valuable victory, one that lifts his own standing but also arrests the gloomy, declinist mood that has gripped some in his country, convinced that American power is on the slide. He has done in two years what his predecessor failed to do in eight. But Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner should stay in the White House basement: al-Qaida remains, the war in Afghanistan is not over, and there is still so much more work to do.

Full article here

ah, wonderful wisconsin

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magnificent

…at the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” rally, Washington, October 30

Thanks to globalcitizenlinda for the link to the photo

fox ‘news’: president and first lady exchange venomous glances!