Who’s the Red Tie Guy?

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Student Mikhail Hendricks, 16, embraces first lady Michelle Obama after she answered students’ questions at the University of Cape Town, June 23, 2011

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The speech Mikhail Hendricks attended on Sunday:

Rise and Shine

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11:30 ET: VP Biden speaks at a campaign event in Sarasota, Florida (listed at CNN live streaming)

12:0: President Obama departs the White House

12:25 Arrives in Atlantic City and views storm damage with Governor Chris Christie

3:0: VP Biden speaks at at campaign event in Ocala, Florida (C-Span)

3:15: PBO departs Atlantic City

4:25: Arrives at the White House

(Need to check these times, they’re different in every schedule I see)

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President Obama will return to the campaign trail on Thursday after taking three days off to oversee storm response. He will attend rallies in Green Bay, Wis.; Boulder, Colo.; and Las Vegas.

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Jonathan Chait (NY Mag): …. Obama can boast a record of accomplishment that bests any president since Roosevelt, and has fewer demerits on his record than any of them, including Roosevelt. The only president that comes close in gross positive accomplishment is Lyndon Johnson, whose successes were overwhelmed by his failures ….

….What can be said without equivocation is that Obama has proven himself morally, intellectually, temperamentally, and strategically. In my lifetime, or my parents’, he is easily the best president. On his own terms, and not merely as a contrast to an unacceptable alternative, he overwhelmingly deserves reelection.

Full article here

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NYT: Chris Christie was supposed to be one of Mitt Romney‘s most aggressive surrogates, constantly attacking President Obama in the waning days of the presidential campaign.

Instead, Mr. Christie on Tuesday repeatedly heaped praise on Mr. Obama for his leadership of the federal government’s response to the storm that slammed into his state on Monday …. he was effusive about Mr. Obama’s administration, calling the storm response “wonderful,” “excellent” and “outstanding.”

….  some Republicans have already begun grumbling about Mr. Christie’s over-the-top praise of the president at such a crucial time in the election…

…. In several appearances on morning news programs on Tuesday, Mr. Christie went out of his way to thank the president personally….

More here

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David Firestone (NYT): On a day when millions of Americans face serious hardship as they recover from Hurricane Sandy’s damage, Mitt Romney clearly decided it would be crass to campaign in a conventional way. So he turned a scheduled rally in Kettering, Ohio, this morning into a “storm relief event,” and posed before piles of donated canned goods.

…. He described such donations as “the American way” …. but the real “American way” is quite different. Most disaster agencies don’t want donated goods; they need cash. And in the modern era, the most important cash comes from taking people’s tax dollars and distributing them in the form of federal aid to communities hard-hit by a disaster. Because that involves the federal government, it is tainted in the minds of Mr. Romney and his party. It is compulsory, and thus not an offering of the heart.

….. Mr. Romney ignored all questions about his plans for federal emergency management. It’s probably embarrassing to admit those plans consist largely of collecting soup cans.

Full post here

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Cagle

Cagle

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Red Cross

Being President

President Obama visits the Red Cross National Headquartersin Washington, Oct 20 (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

More soon

This and That

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San Francisco International Airport

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All times Eastern:

6:15 Departs San Francisco

7:20: Arrives Los Angeles

10:15: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills (CNN live streaming)

11:55: Delivers remarks at a campaign event at a private Residence, Beverly Hills (Print Pool only)

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People gather in a lobby of a building to catch a glimpse of President Obama where was attending a campaign event in San Francisco

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Heads up: Wolf Blitzer & Co will be red-carpeting soon. Swoon!

While you’re waiting 😉

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6:0 CNN live streaming

6:30 C-Span

the rev carpet

Chat away 😉

pete souza & chuck kennedy? magic.

…. with St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Lance Berkman after welcoming the team to the White House to honor their 2011 World Series victory, Jan. 17

….. greeting neighbors outside the home of William and Endia Eason in Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 4

….  during the flight on Marine One to Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill., Jan. 11

….. greeting Tuskeegee Airmen in the East Garden Room of the White House prior to a screening of the film “Red Tails” in the Family Theater, Jan. 13

….. watching a performance backstage with iCarly cast members prior to an iCarly screening at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 13

Jan. 27

… boarding Marine One for departure from Cambridge-Dorchester Airport in Cambridge, Md., Jan. 27

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in a potato sack race with Jimmy Fallon in the East Room of the White House, Jan. 25

…. signing items for Make-A-Wish child Rafael Mullet during a visit in the Oval Office, Jan. 25

….. with students at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 25

…. hugging Rep. Gabrielle Giffords before delivering the State of the Union address, Jan. 24

How did I miss these, they were posted on Flickr a week ago 😕

More photos here

evening all

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Reuters: A surge in hiring in the world’s largest economy last month drove the Nasdaq to an 11-year high on Friday as optimism grew that the labor market is on a steady path to recovery.

The broad-based gains on solid trading volume also sent the Dow Jones industrial average near a four-year high….

The U.S. economy created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January and the unemployment rate dropped to nearly a three-year low of 8.3 percent, the government said.

“It is really hard to find something not to like in the jobs report,” said Andrew Goldberg, market strategist at JP Morgan Funds in New York. “There is genuine strength in this report with broad-based jobs creation.”

More here

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President Obama thanks Lt. Jacob Johnson, an Arlington County firefighter and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, for introducing him at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Virginia

President Barack Obama poses for a picture with people in the audience following his remarks on the Veterans Job Corps at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Va., Feb. 3, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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NYT: The comeback from bankruptcy at Chrysler hit a milestone Wednesday when the smallest of the Detroit automakers reported a $183 million profit for last year, its first full year of positive earnings since 2005.

…. Last year’s results show how far Chrysler has come since 2009, when it was taken over by Fiat as part of the bailout engineered by the Obama administration.

Its revenue for the year increased 31 percent to $55 billion, and worldwide sales of its cars and trucks grew 22 percent to 1.85 million vehicles. In the United States, its market share increased to 10.5 percent, up from 9.2 percent a year earlier.

More here

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WMUR: A new poll shows that the improving economy has also raised President Barack Obama’s standing in New Hampshire.

….Obama has seen his job approval rating nearly flip from the last Granite State Poll in October, with 51 percent now saying they like the job the president is doing, compared to 43 percent who don’t. Just 41 percent said they approved in October.

…. Obama’s improved fortunes are also reflected in head-to-head matchups against the Republican field in New Hampshire. In hypothetical matchups, Obama leads Mitt Romney by 10 points, Ron Paul by eight points, and trounces Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum by 25 and 21 points respectively.

More here

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The Week

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Robert Shrum: …. So it’s Romney in 2012, despite glaring weaknesses revealed in the primaries, from his animatronic awkwardness to his plutocratic profile. The latter has been a product not just of attacks from his opponents — and the attacks will be unremitting in the general election — but of gaffes that are in reality self-revelations of his actual character and conviction. When he slips the confines of his canned answers, when an off-message moment or question deflects him from toeing his adviser’s carefully formulated tropes, he tends to shift from Ken Doll to Gordon Gekko.

…. For other candidates, the verbal miscue is an episode; for him, it’s an epidemic – offering $10,000 bets, saying foreclosures should run their course, claiming he feared getting a pink slip, explaining that $400,000 isn’t much money, announcing that he likes to fire people. (And at that, Romney has had a lot of practice.) He blithered about releasing his tax returns, then released only two years — and will face intensifying scrutiny about off-shore tax havens and whether he paid any tax, or almost none, in years we haven’t seen, like 2008 and 2009.

….Romney not only looks like the face of the Republican establishment; by his own words and deeds, he has become the face of unfairness in America, a profile in numbness and indifference.

…. What will Mitt Malaprop say next? Stay tuned.

Full article here

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Nick Anderson

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Steve Benen: Several weeks ago, I launched a Friday afternoon feature, highlighting the most offensive Mitt Romney falsehoods of the week. I was off last week, but let’s get it started again.

1. Romney claimed President Obama “went before the United Nations” and “said nothing about thousands of rockets being rained in on Israel from the Gaza Strip.”

True or false? The claim isn’t even close to being right.

2. Romney said Democrats “passed Dodd-Frank,” which “has made it almost impossible for community banks.”

True or false? He’s has said this before, and it’s still completely untrue.

More here

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OFA

she’s so, um, presidential

Boston Herald: “The American people have had enough. They’ve had it up to here,” a fiery Michele Bachmann told a crowd of roughly 250 gathered in a back yard in Raymond, N.H….New Hampshire is the second stop on her three state announcement tour…..

…… Bachmann even unloaded a risque revelation about her and her husband’s first dates, saying that they would visit the elderly in nursing homes. When the audience chuckled, she added “Well I didn’t tell you what we did afterwards … we do, you know, have red blood in us. What can I say?”

Realizing she may have revealed too much, she joked, “the kids won’t appreciate that mom said that.”