What A Mighty Good Man

@danpfeiffer There was once a president who always made sure those who were protecting him were fed on time, that t… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…

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∞ tat tva invicta ∞ (@_tatvamasi) August 04, 2017

The President’s Day

President Barack Obama speaks at the United Auto Workers-General Motors Center for Human Resources. While in Detroit the president visited the 2016 North American International Auto Show and speak of the progress made by the city, its people and neighborhoods, and the American auto industry

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President Barack Obama is introduced by United Auto Workers Vice President Cindy Estrada

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UAW President Dennis Williams, from left, President Barack Obama and North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) chairman Paul Sabatini talk during a tour of the NAIAS

President Barack Obama stops by the Chrysler exhibit during his visit to the 2016 North American International Auto Show

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President Barack Obama responds to a bystander after visiting retail store Shinola. Someone yelled out, “Did you buy a watch?” Obama said, “I already have one,” and pointed to the watch on his wrist

President Barack Obama buys an item at the Shinola watchmakers flagship store

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President Barack Obama has lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery with Teana Dowdell, autoworker at the General Motors’ Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Emergency medicine physician engaged with Detroit youth through violence prevention and intervention programs, part of Detroit’s efforts around the My Brother’s Keeper initiative,  Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, and Tom Kartsotis, Founder, Shinola

fight back

NBC Chicago reported Judicial Watch and Drudge’s lies word for word on the Michelle Obama/Africa story, and none of the facts in the post below.

You can contact them – and ask that they report the truth – at:

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Facebook

Website contact form

this is a shock: the right wing hates the first lady.

MediaMatters: The axe-grinding good-government poseurs at Judicial Watch are in a twist over First Lady Michelle Obama’s June trip to Africa, calling it “a nice taxpayer-funded ‘working’ vacation.” According to documents they obtained via FOIA requests (and their own “calculations”), the trip cost taxpayers $425,000 in travel and food expenses. Their “report” has already been picked up by Drudge, and it’s being flogged by the dimmer corners of the right-wing media.

….. First, it’s ridiculous to criticize the First Lady for the travel costs of an official trip to Africa. She’s the First Lady; if she travels anywhere, it’s going to be funded with public money. She can’t exactly fly stand-by on Southwest.

Second, the South Africa safari was paid for with the Obama’s private funds. What’s more, in taking her daughters on safari in Africa, Mrs. Obama was following in the footsteps of her predecessor. (Read here about Laura Bush and her daughters’ safari in Africa)

(A quick peek at Judicial Watch’s press release archive doesn’t turn up any outraged denunciations of Laura Bush’s safari-going ways.)

…. to say that the trip “was as much an opportunity for the Obama family and friends to go on a safari as it was a trip intended to advance the administration’s agenda in Africa” is absurd. The six-day trip was dominated by official events and meetings with world leaders…..

…. Judicial Watch doesn’t really explain how a meeting with Nelson Mandela constitutes “tourism.” Also, the other events Judicial Watch considers “tourism” – visits to museums and historical landmarks – are standard fare for visiting dignitaries. Laura Bush, during the same Africa trip noted above, toured museums and memorials dedicated to victims of apartheid and genocide…..

Full post here

Soweto, June 22

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ABC:  ….. The White House says a number of assertions made by conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch are in error:

The group calculated that the use of the C-32A aircraft cost taxpayers $424,142 (34.8 flight hours x $12,188 per hour).

“The number stated is misconstrued and out of context,” says a senior White House official. “The hourly rate is not the marginal cost of operating the plane – it is an accounting figure that prices in a number of fixed costs from maintaining the Air Force fleet for this kind of plane over a year. For example, it includes estimated replacement parts, depreciation, repairs, and costs that would have been incurred regardless of this flight.”

Judicial Watch says that Sasha and Malia Obama are listed as “Senior Staff.” Not true, says the White House.

“The Obama daughters were not listed as Senior Staff – that only designates the area of the plane where they were seated,” says the official. “The Air Force categorizes the passengers by compartment on the plane.”

…. The senior White House official says that private safari “was designated as a private event and paid for personally.”…. “It was an official trip with a 5-7 official events each day,” the official says.

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FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA’S VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA AND BOTSWANA

TUESDAY, JUNE 21 – PRETORIA & JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

Mrs. Obama began her day by traveling to Pretoria where she met with President Zuma’s wife, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma …..  she then attended a reception with South African leaders organized by the U.S. Embassy … She then visited the Nelson Mandela Foundation, meeting with Graca Machel, Former First Lady of Mozambique, and wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela. She also met with former President Mandela, before touring the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 – JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Mrs. Obama visited Regina Mundi Church in Soweto, where she delivered the keynote address to a U.S.-sponsored Young African Women Leaders Forum. She then visited the Hector Pieterson Memorial, honoring the twelve year-old boy who protested apartheid and was shot and killed by apartheid government police. In the afternoon, Mrs Obama attended two sessions of a forum of Young African Women Leaders. Mrs. Obama completed her visit to Johannesburg by leading the final group of forum participants in a community service project.

THURSDAY, JUNE 23 – CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Mrs. Obama began her day in Cape Town by thanking United States Consulate employees and their families. She then visited Robben Island – where former President Mandela was held for 18 of the 27 years he was imprisoned. She then delivered remarks and took questions from students at the University of Cape Town. She then visited the Cape Town Soccer Stadium where she met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and organizations dedicated to combating HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

FRIDAY, JUNE 24 – CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA & GABORONE, BOTSWANA

Mrs. Obama visited the Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinic Center of Excellence’s Teen Club that was assembled to teach leadership among teens and encourage young people to teach others about HIV/AIDS. Mrs. Obama joined Teen Club members in a service project. She then had a meeting with President Ian Khama.

SATURDAY, JUNE 25 – GABORONE, BOTSWANA

Mrs. Obama began her day by thanking U.S. Embassy employees and their families. Following this event, Mrs. Obama and her family departed for private family safari events.

SUNDAY, JUNE 26 – GABORONE, BOTSWANA

Mrs. Obama and her family left Botswana to return to the United States.

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But this trip was okay:

Laura Bush in Cape Town, South Africa, July 12, 2005

July 2005: After a safari weekend, Laura Bush stepped out of a dusty SUV with her twin daughters on Monday to serve as a goodwill ambassador in Africa for President Bush.

The first lady’s whirl through South Africa, Tanzania and Rwanda this week comes on the heels of a Scotland summit where British Prime Minister Tony Blair made alleviating Africa’s mass suffering the top agenda item for Bush and leaders of other wealthy countries.

Mrs. Bush and her 23-year-old daughters, Barbara and Jenna, spent the weekend at the Madikwe Game Reserve on the South African-Botswana border….

The first lady’s staff asked photographers to refrain from shooting the twins as they boarded the plane in Gaborone, Botswana, for the flight to Cape Town, on grounds that they were not part of the official delegation.

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In 2010 Judicial Watch released its list of ‘Washington’s ten Most Corrupt Politicians’ – the list included President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Jesse Jackson, Jr, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer and Maxine Waters.

It didn’t, for example, include Darrell Issa.

🙄

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What can we conclude from all of this?

Well, two things:

(1) Laura Bush is a Republican and she’s white.

(2) Michelle Obama is a Democrat and she’s black.

That’s all, really.

fighting back

Mediaite: This week the Obama campaign launched a new front in the heightened information wars that come with presidential campaigns, with a starkly designed and somewhat controversial new website called Attack Watch. The site enables user-generated submissions of what Obama supporters deem to be unfair or untruthful media attacks on President Obama, his political campaign and his administration’s policy….

…. the site has so far been a big hit. A source within the Obama campaign has told Mediaite, that in just the first day, the user-generated research tool has been nothing short of an enormous success. “In less than 24 hours we’ve had over 100,000 people sign up at the website, which indicates significant interest from supporters.”….

….. the very least this digital effort did its job bit perhaps instilling a little fear in the GOP campaign efforts. It’s not difficult to imagine social media staffers at the RNC scratching their heads and saying “why didn’t we think of that?”

The essence of AttackWatch is the Obama campaign outsourcing of opposition media research to its army of loyal supporters …. In the brave new world that is political smear campaigns, leveraging the passion of one’s political base is not something that we should fear, but rather a smart and savvy political move.

Thank you Loriah

Sign up here

Follow @attackwatch on Twitter

‘get the facts, fight the smears’

Link – this is a seriously excellent site, part of OFA. I’ve added it to the blogroll here if you ever need the link.

Sign up here

Follow @attackwatch on Twitter

Thanks Jovie and Tien Le

truth

Okay, remember this photo from yesterday:

This was the caption: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011

Some headlines from today:

From the Mail: “President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.”

The truth?

New York Times: The president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan.

Independent (UK): ….It was on Sunday afternoon that the drama of at last netting “Geronimo” – the codename given to Bin Laden for the operation – began. Obama, Clinton, Gates, Donilon, Brennan and a few others huddled in the White House Situation Room. A video and audio link connected them to Leon Panetta, the CIA director in Langley, Virginia, who would talk them through what was going on in Pakistan in real time, beginning with the helicopters carrying the Seals clattering through the night sky and arriving above their target.

Jake Tapper on ABC Word News tonight: “The President and his top aides were not able to watch any real time action being shot by the Navy Seals themselves…”.

So, the President did not watch as “the terror chief was shot in the left eye”.

All those people (mainly professional left types) calling him ‘ghoulish!” today ….. be embarrassed 😉

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Thank you Hachikō

‘why isn’t obama getting credit for stopping an atrocity?’

Rebel fighters celebrate by waving a Kingdom of Libya flag atop a destroyed tank on the outskirts of the town of Ajdabiyah, March 26

Tom Malinowski (the Washington director of Human Rights Watch): Here is one lesson we can draw from the mostly negative media commentary about the Obama administration’s actions in Libya: Presidents get more credit for stopping atrocities after they begin than for preventing them before they get out of hand.

…In Libya, many people (we don’t yet know how many) were arrested, forcibly disappeared and possibly executed as the Qaddafi government consolidated its control over Tripoli and rebel-held enclaves … But the Obama administration and its international allies did act soon enough to prevent the much larger-scale atrocities that would likely have followed Qaddafi’s reconquest of eastern Libya and especially the city of Benghazi … it was, by any objective standard, the most rapid multinational military response to an impending human rights crisis in history, with broader international support than any of the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s.

But precisely because the international community acted in time – before Qaddafi retook Benghazi – we never saw what might have happened had they not acted….  we should acknowledge what could be happening in eastern Libya right now had Qaddafi’s forces continued their march…

…It is legitimate to challenge the Obama administration about its objectives and how it plans to achieve them. It’s reasonable to be concerned about the impact the air war will have on civilians if it continues indefinitely. We do not know what will happen next in Libya, or where this all will lead – we never do. But we do know what has likely been averted. And for that we should be grateful.

Full article here

ah, memories……

Washington Post (2002): …President Bush … sprang from his golf cart at 6:15 a.m. and said he was “distressed to hear about the latest suicide bombers in Israel.” Just over four hours before, as Bush slept at his parents’ seaside retreat, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Israel, killing nine passengers.

Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand …. however incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead. “There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” he said. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

His business out of the way, Bush barely paused for breath before saying, “Thank you. Now watch this drive.”

The abrupt segue illustrates the dilemma Bush will face over the next month as he relaxes and works at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., at a time of global political volatility. On Tuesday, Bush will leave Washington behind until Labor Day. That is likely to mean a return to the golf-cart diplomacy of last summer when Bush talked Middle East peace between playing holes, at one point dripping sweat as he said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat “can do a lot more to be convincing the people on the street to stop these acts of terrorism.”

More here

it’s barack time!

President Barack Obama points to an employee’s watch with the President’s picture, during a tour of Industrial Support Inc., in Buffalo, N.Y., May 13, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)