(1) President Obama greets five-month-old Davida Asen and her mother Rebecca Watson in the Outer Oval Office. Rebecca’s brother-in-law, Jonathan Asen, Office of Legislative Affairs, brought his family to have departure photos taken with the President (Photo by Pete Souza)
(2) President Obama thanks Grace Jerry who introduced him at the YALI Town Hall, Washington DC
(3) President Obama holds a little girl during a walking tour of the rebuilt Treme neighborhood in New Orleans (Photo by Doug Mills)
(4) Poldine Carlo, founding member of the Fairbanks Native Association, wipes away a tear after meeting President Obama at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. Carlo sang the President a song about Denali to mark the day he restored Mount McKinley to its original name of Denali (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
(5) President Obama greets a young boy on his tour of New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Photo by Pete Souza)
(6) Rep. John Lewis makes remarks on 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act as the President and AG Lynch listen
(7) President Obama greets residents in the the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Tremé is one of the oldest black neighborhoods in America, which borders the French Quarter just north of Downtown (Photos by Andrew Harnik/AP)
(8) President Obama smiles as he sits in a cart while golfing at Farm Neck Golf Club, in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on the island of Martha’s Vineyard (Photo by Steven Senne/AP)
(9) President Obama and daughter Malia arrive at the White House on the first family’s return from vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard (Photo by Olivier Douliery/Getty)
(10) President Obama greets residents in the the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans (Photo by Andrew Harnik)
****
Howdy
Hey!
I’ve been lurking. Hi, Chips, Danny, VC. President was with Malia not Sasha.
Corrected!
Here you ago again Ms Chipssssss……,,ohhh myyy goodnesss how are we supposed to pic one of these…i am torn between 5 and 7…..
Beee-yooo-ti-ful pictures to help you in your birthday celebrations, TS! Have yourself a lovely afternoon ….down on the beach….maybe!
furst.
it’s all your fault.
That’s Malia, not Sasha:) #9…Now, I STILL have no idea:)
Corrected!
Thanks:)
I had to go back and read it again. So we both caught that. Sharp eye you have DF.
Thanks!
#7 reminds me of ET
Hi Chips….
Love these photo of the year…however difficult it is to choose!!
No. 4 is the one for me …. so meaningful!
My choice too.
Um, er, uh, sigh. All Of The Above. 🐻 ❤ This will take a few minutes, hours, days: how much time do I have?
I answered you lovely posts on earlier MightyP - sorry I missed you last night
Thank you, 99ts, I miss me too, lately! Since my birthday, I suspect time is speeding up, or slowing down, or something! Am heading out to dinner with friends, will check later. Had some blissful two days with dear daughter, so proud and relieved she is well, strong and healthy; it was so hard that I couldn’t be with her when she was in hospital at Thanksgiving. We are fine now!
I voted for #6. I gained my political consciousness during the 1960s freedom movement. Congressman John Lewis is one of my heroes! He worked so hard and endured so much personal suffering in the cause of Black freedom. Without the moral indignation against the Jim Crow system, and the sacrifices of people like John Lewis to make it possible for us to vote, I doubt that this country would have been able to elect our brilliant President.
Number 9 - family man
GM TOD - today is my birthday - not that I need another one. After the events of yesterday tis a quiet day doing as little as possible
Did you see my wishes for you above?
I dood (as gbabe would say) - thank you vc
Ah 99ts, an ocean-full of good wishes to you, after your recent woes you deserve a perfect day. Happy birthday to you, and thank you for all the loveliness and wisdom you bring to TOD.
{{{99ts}}} Happy Birthday to you!!! Love and happiness!! And cake!
Happy birthday to you, 99ts!
…
oh, here they are.
Happy Birthday 99…
Happy Birthday 99ts. Celebrate and we will celebrate with you. 🙂
Happy Birthday 99ts!! 🙂
Many Happy Returns of the Day!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Someone - get balloons!! 🙂
HAPPY BIRTHDAY our very own Aussie, Mz 99ts ❤
99ts, Happy Birthday. May your year be filled with good things. Enjoy your day in whatever way makes you happy.
Number 9!
Why can’t we have Lebron help us to get someone and support that someone to run against McGinty. Jeebus people! Ugh!!!
I think folks are looking at all angles, still thrashing it out! And then he’ll decide how he can best contribute (which would be great!).
Coming up:
Thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes, - for some of you - my birthday has probably not yet arrived (30th) - so you can repeat all that when the day ticks over 🙂 The advantage of world wide events - repeat and repeat.
Happy Birthday 99ts! Tomorrow or today or whichever. We hope you have/had a wonderful day!!!!
Happy Birthday 99ts!! 🙂
Amk, I wish you would give these theme toons a break and see if you can find some that encourage positive redress. Thanks
Sorry, if we are not to talk about this now, when are we supposed to talk about it? Ugliness needs exposure.
The ugliness has been exposed - what you are doing is over kill for some personal enjoyment and to some of us who live through it, it hurts.
personal enjoyment? wow.
AMK, the toons you choose always hit home. They sharpen people’s understanding of the world around them and show us hard truths in simple terms. Good cartoonists are some of the finest journalists working today.
Exactly. In the current poisonous dishonest journalism propagandized by the entire msm, toonists offer that sliver of real journalism that needs to be spread around. They are the only ones willing to tell the ugly and horrible truths.
Amk, Thank you for posting the cartoons. I always find them extremely informative and truthful. Please continue enlightening the TOD family.
There’s a time & place for most things. At this time when Tamir’s mother was just handed devastating news, I would prefer that we all would contribute solutions to provide some solace. Piling on does no good
We obviously disagree. Let’s leave it at that.
“Ugliness needs exposure.”
Exactly, Amk!
AMK, Please never give up exposing the ugliness! Here is the wisdom that the great Fredrick Douglass shared with us with regard to the heroic struggle to abolish slavery that I am absolutely convinced is still relevant today:
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet to her August claims have been born of earnest struggle….If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. POWER COCEDES NOTHING WITHOUT A DEMAND. IT NEVER DID and IT NEVER WILL….”
Yes, Nath. Without constant fear of exposure, racism isn’t going away on its own. The ugliness shown in the last 7 years has been an eye opener for people like me who had wrongly believed that racism had declined to a large extent. I am sure the victims’ families too want the public eye and constant questioning of these vile perpetrators.
You are absolutely spot on, AMK! In 1955, Emmett Till’s mother, whose son had been shot, beaten, and mutilated beyond recognition, insisted on having an open coffin so that the world can see what the despicable white supremacist had done to hier 14 years-old son! The horrific mutilated corpse of young Till forced people to confront the reality of racism and played a major role in the galvanizing the Black community to fight to end racial segregation. Tamir Rice’s was just as outraged as Emmett Till’s mother was sixty years ago. Voting is absolutely crucial! But so is moral revulsion, from all of us who are disgusted by the vile actions of many
I appreciate the toons…they are powerful…
They are indeed, prettyfoot58! They are exposing the ugliness of institutional racism. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is absolutely necessary to publicly expose evil in order to force society to deal with it.
as you said in a previous post…We need “Organized Protest” which includes an all of the above strategy..the key word is “organized”
The Truth shall set Us Free.
Truth is the uncovering of Ugliness. The main reason those who prefer Ugliness denounce The Truth.
Amk, thank you.
I wish I was born in the time of Star Wars, I’d have my own ship and I’d fly to different planets and stuff. Wake up, eat some breakfast and go hang out with some friends. Maybe date and stuff, find me a nice young lady.
Thank you for sharing, Don. 🙂
hahahahaha
The one nice thing about all these difficult choices - I’ll be happy whichever one wins!
Wasn’t it enough to just say that HRC respects rural America and leave it at that? Was it necessary to falsely accuse PBO of “disrespecting rural America” in order to compliment HRC? //smdh.
Seriously Chips…I can’t even with this garbage. Funny that this woman fails to mention any of HRC’s primary Dem opponents, or her potential GOP opponents, but instead jumps straight to POTUS as her reference of attack….
still stuck on 2008.
But remember SCOTUS said racism is in the past
If it continues, this will help the GOP win in 2008 cause many PBO supporters will not vote for anyone with this attitude
ahhh - 2016 (amk talking about 2008 - my fingers picked it up)
NH is a bigots country. So she will prolly be silent.
Pres Obama won NH in 2008 and 2012.
Racists are in every State. Most folks are not Racists. However, there are Progressive, Liberal and Emoprog Racists…..unfortunately.
Great tweet, Chips! Are these PUMAs who idolize HRC so clueless that they think she can be elected president without the votes of President Obama’s supporters?
Forever onward, they will all be running against Barack Obama, and in their hearts they will all know, and never admit, not a single one of them is fit to polish his shoes. Or as qualified for the post as he is. It is their own shame. It has nothing to do with him. Posers. All of them. Posers. Goodnight, my friends are coming up, I am too tired to go out, but it’s the holidays! Many blessings! {{{{{ TOD }}}}}
The fact the she thought it was ok to say that about President Obama speaks volumes. And now I’ll sit back and wait for the Clintonistas to tell me I gotta vote for Hillary.
THIS!!!! 100 times, Don
Well said, Don! I am joining you waiting ” to hear from the “Clintonistas” about the persistence of PUMA’s disrespect and lies about President Obama.
Dear Kathleen Kelley, Unlike the racists rural Americans most of America respect President Obama.
Happy Birthday 99ts ~ hope it is/was FANTASTIC!!
ty sherijr - a peaceful day - after the hectic holiday time with Miss 3 (I am a big girl)
these choices get harder and harder.
Lovely to see Rita Moreno on tonight’s Kennedy Center Honors.
I have my own “story” about her - Ha! Attended a strict, inner-city Catholic high school in the ’60s (all girls for two years, then the all-boys school merged with us, and thus the “trouble” began). One week, we learned somebody had treated every kid in the school to see the movie West Side Story. At our appointed times, we all walked a few blocks - were herded like cattle, as I liked to say - to the movie theater, where a good time was had by all. Great story, great movie.
We returned to our respective homerooms - I was in junior year. When we walked into my homeroom, the nun (who took no prisoners, on a normal day) said, “Close the door!” and pointed her long arm toward it. Then she said, “And you, you girls in your uniforms and you boys in your jackets and ties, were treated to see that movie, where they were kissing and ‘making googly eyes’ at one another up on the screen, and you were laughing and yelling, and members of the public knew which school you were from, and it was horrendous, and you will never go to see another movie as long as you are in this school.”
You had to sit there totally expressionless … one of the hardest things any of us had to do, especially the poor boys, who were way too much for her on a normal day!
Left that school when I graduated, and never looked back! But I swear Catholic school in the ’60s certainly taught us the importance of having a sense of humor!
The end.
Back to regular programming.
are the O’s back in DC already?
If you mean because they’re attending the Kennedy Honors event - believe that was pre-recorded!
ah, gotcha.
You scared me for a minute there, like they had to come home early. 🙂
🙂
I am eternally reminded of the “Matron in Charge” of the all girl college rooming house who (in 1964) told the young women (ages 17-20) that they must not wear red in the spring - for fear of exciting the men. Your stories so remind me of my life in the 60s - where some things changed but so many stayed the same.
They “changed,” once we got the hell out of those in-many-ways-wonderful institutions! It was the Sixties, for goodness sake!
It took awhile in my world - 1969 before married women could work for the govt in some of the Oz states. The war helped along much change - but it wasn’t until the 1970s that this happened in my world. Our time of much social change was 1972-75
Wow. 1969?
I actually remember - think it was about 1970 - when women were “allowed” (at my federal government job) to wear “pants suits” to the office, for the first time. We were already wearing mini skirts, go figure, but “pants” were a no-no. How ridiculous is that! One outfit I had did double duty - it was a black faux-leather mini dress with matching long pants to go with, so it could be stretched (except for the mini part) into two outfits - Ha!
Think the “pant suits” were in about 1975 where I worked - and yes we did wear mini mini skirts!
My first job 1967 was at a steel works - definitely no long pants - not even when we had to tour the works - dusty, dirty, revolting - in dresses and heels! Not a woman friendly place - although we got
1. morning and afternoon tea breaks that the men didn’t get
2. Clock off 5 min earlier than the men (avoid the rush)
3. ride home in the black limousine if you worked later than 6pm
4. We could call in sick (full pay) with no reason given - men had to say what was wrong with them.
Also too - less pay
Young women today have NO IDEA! And these aren’t even the worst stories! But we survived, for sure.
Gosh JOB - we thought we were winning the world - and to see some now try and take it all back - grrrrrrrrrrrrr
Tell me about it! Grrrrrrrrr!
Happy birthday, 99ts!!!
ty 57 - it was a good day
JO’B, I am biased when it comes to the “Sixties.” The “Sixties” had a tremendous impact on the Social and political reality of this country.
I am, too, nath. Just recalling some of the more humorous events we high schoolers “suffered through.”
Wouldn’t have missed any of it, myself. The “Sixties” got me thinking on the right track about a lot of things, which I’ve never regretted! Also brought me my dear son, in 1969!
Yes indeed, JO’B! I feel blessed to have been alive during the most consequential period in the history of the world. I am glad you had your son when you were still very young. I am sure you were able to share with him all the good,the bad and the ugly of the Sixities!
Hopefully not too much of the ugly, then, but - by now - he knows!
He did grow up hearing the music of the time, for sure! Before he even went to school, my friend - who had a son my son’s age - said to me, “My kid is singing Freddie Flintstone tunes, and your kid is singing the Top Ten!” All those rides in the car, radio blaring!
I knew once maybe I’d introduced him to too many of the songs, when he didn’t really understand the lyrics. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but when he was about 7 (I think), he was singing this at home at the top of his lungs one day: “My eyes adored you … though I never laid a hand on you, my eyes adored you!” Think I mentioned some Fred Flintstone tunes to him at that point. Ha!
George Pataki has announced he is ending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
“While tonight is the end of my journey for the White House as I suspend my campaign for president, I am confident we can elect the right person,” Pataki said in a web video posted on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. “Someone who will bring us together and who understands that politicians, including the president, must be the people’s servant and not their master.”
The former New York governor hoped his experience as a three-term chief executive, whose tenure included the September 11 terrorist attacks, would resonate with the Republican Party. But he never broke single digits in polling or qualified for prime-time debates.
This fucking guy always looks like he just woke up from a fucking nap.
… behind are many of his compatriots with a hint of a pulse that should call it quit soon. But I am enjoying the clown car show.
And so à-propos.
To 99ts!
And that made me jump - ty NCLB
Happy Birthday, 99ts 😉
Hello everyone. I’ve lurked for the past week, because I went to California for Christmas to be with my sister. she lives north of San Diego, and it was good to get back to California, my husband’s home state, where we met and lived before moving. My son and his family have been in the north part of the state for Christmas break, as his children and wife had never been to California, and he wanted to take them where he and his dad were born. They have had a spectacular trip seeing all the wonders around San Francisco from the redwood trees, to the Golden Gate Bridge. to driving Route One south from San Francisco, and so much more. I got home late last night, missing the terrible ice and snow storm. My son missed the tornado in Rowlett, TX. It hit one mile east of his house! His house is fine.
The trip was very good for me, emotionally and mentally. Being back where we met, where he lived half his life, where our children were born seemed to fill in some holes, and settle something. Sunday I had lunch with my sister and a friend at a restaurant in Del Mar looking at the beautiful, BLUE, HUGE Pacific ocean. That was truly a healing time.
Now, my precious doggie, Chanel and I are sitting in front of the fire in the fireplace comfortable and warm together. Thanks to all of you for your concern and care these past months.
Carolyn, I’m glad you got this chance to go “home” and retrace some of the important places in your life and marriage. It’s good that it provided some healing for all of you. You’ve shown such courage in this very difficult time-I really admire your strength.
bless you carolyn…thank you for sharing your precious stories with us…((huggs))
Oh, carolyn, I’m so glad. Tears in my eyes, reading that! Hugs to you!
There is something so comforting about living near/being near the sea. I was raised on the other side of the Pacific Ocean - could hear it at night through the bedroom window & have missed that sound ever since I moved just a little inland. So nice to hear that you found some peace beside that wonderful and majestic ocean.
I’m so glad your Christmas went well. You have been on my mind, facing your first Christmas without him. You are loved, Carolyn.
I agree with exotic. This is ridiculous to expect PBO to single-handedly address a widespread problem not of his making - particularly when there are structural, group and individual efforts to perpetuate it.
Good call - I agree, as well.
This is how they do…blame the victim and then expect the victim to fix the problem…that way the onus is not on “them”..like the wizard of oz said …pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
Hopefruit2, I agree with you and exotic! This is utter nonsense from the New York Daily News! President Obama (then presidential candidate Obama) forthrightly addressed racism! Those invested in perpetuating white supremacy are not at all interested in listening to the the President about racism.
Happy, Happy Birthday 99!
#9 for me. I love to see fathers and daughters together.
ty sabreen - I voted for #9 also - family values at their best
Wishing you a belated Happy Birthday99ts! I hope you had a wonderful day filled with joy,laughter and love!
ty nath - Mr 99 and I had a quiet & very enjoyable day after the frantic events yesterday. It was a delight.
John Kerry did a fine intro of the Carole King segment!
The Shirelles’!!!! (Showin’ my age?)
Ha Ha Ha - Little Eva!
// @bearkisha: Obama please i beg you not to leave your presidency position america and tg e world will never be the same without you //
This comment I copied from one of Pete Souza’s latest Instagram photos and pasted it here. This person’s words encapsulate how so many of us feel. SIGH….
New post.
https://theobamadiary.com/2015/12/29/tweet-of-the-day-13/
Only Queen Aretha could bring Brother Mark out of his counting coma….
Those pics are so not fair! How does one choose, they’re all so lovely & have such meaning in our PBO journey! Damn, Chips, my choice is # one through the end, henceforth! Uh-huh! 🙂