BREAKING: @POTUS designates two new national monuments—protecting over a million acres in Utah and Nevada:… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 28, 2025BREAKING: @POTUS announces designation of #BearsEars National Monument!!! 1st truly #NativeAmerican monument - hist… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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Utah Diné Bikéyah (@UtahDineBikeyah) December 28, 2025****
.@POTUS has protected more land & water than any other president in history. Today's actions build on that progress… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 28, 20252 new national monuments protect gorgeous landscapes, important cultural sites & wildlife habitat for future gens:… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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US Dept of Interior (@Interior) December 28, 2025****
Gold Butte & Bears Ears National Monuments protect some of our nation’s most precious natural & cultural resources:… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 28, 2025"Today’s actions will help protect this cultural legacy" —@POTUS on designating two new national monuments:… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 28, 2025****
Thanks @POTUS for protecting Bears Ears & Gold Butte - lands sacred to tribes & important to U.S. natural, cultural… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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Sally Jewell (@SecretaryJewell) December 28, 2025Once again @POTUS has been on the right side of history #BearsEars #GoldButte Let us bring this legacy full circle and start the EIS! -DAII
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Standing Rock Sioux (@StandingRockST) December 28, 2025****
Monumental moment for #Tribes, #NativeAmerican ppl, all Americans! Thk u @POTUS @SecretaryJewell @WhiteHouseCEQ for… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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Utah Diné Bikéyah (@UtahDineBikeyah) December 28, 2025Time to celebrate! Today, @POTUS boldly protected Bears Ears as our newest National Monument. https://t.co/5mlKCETFv9
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Patagonia (@patagonia) December 28, 2025
White House.gov
❤🌹🙏🏻🌹❤
Yay, Pamela! Beautiful photos. I am thrilled about this action, especially since one of those preserved areas is near the Bundy Ranch.
The People’s President. Thank you so much, President Obama.
Thank you NW for posting all the tweets and keeping us up to date.
thanks a lot PBO, Sec Jewell and all the staff and groups who worked on this … these are our commons with benefits for all that will indeed span generations
does the DoD always hold this Full Honor Farewell Ceremony?
I have learned a lot of new things following PBO, FLOTUS, VP, Dr. Biden and the rest of their exceptional team members
The Defense Department gave the same type ceremony to honor George W Bush in January 2009 - so I’m guessing it’s the ceremonial norm, for each Commander-in-Chief.
This one will be really special to all of us, of course!
thanks a lot for the information … I was not aware of this happening before
I didn’t recall it, either, maybe because the last one was W and not sure I would have watched.
Actress Debbie Reynolds, mother of Carrie Fisher, has died at age 84, son confirms to @ABC News. http://abcn.ws/2hqfWs1
heavens!
two deaths in one family within a few days of each other!!!
praying for lots of strength for their family and friends during this very difficult time
Yesterday and today
Debbie told her son Todd that she missed Carrie so much and wanted to be with her.
May the good Lord grant them eternal peace 💕
Amen.
Yes just read about it, so very sad. What a tragic week they’ve had.
So very sad.
That’s wonderful.
This is beautiful. I want one for my home.
So beautiful (I do not remember who said this in a speech); I wish that I could give this family a hug.
Thanks Obama. You are the best. I cried from happiness when I got the email about the monument.
RIP Debbie Reynolds Carrie FIsher.
per their press release, the Bundy’s are not happy at all about this new National Monument designation.
guess they should have tried to work with Department of Interior rather than take up arms against public servants
Bundys
..in case we needed another excellent reason to celebrate this announcement🙂
Must Read.
http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/06/23/thanks-obama/
absolutely wonderful- thank you df!
This is exactly what I have been thinking and was planning someway to compose my thoughts. It also reminds me that there are millions who feel the same as PBO again polls out to be the most admired man in America( and the percentage is not the squeaker that some reports have implied).
df, that is a magnificent “Thanks, Obama” letter from John Pavlovitz. I will be tweeting excepts from John’s letter. See below. Thanks for sharing.
Yep. That about says it all.
Sorry for posting a pic we’ve seen before. Ha.
oh, oh, oh…. never say sorry!!🙂
NEVER say sorry!
“God speed mama”, and Debbie Reynolds gone now too? ❤🌹🙏🏻🌹❤
I love to see him relaxing and playing outdoors with his friends. If anyone deserves a vacation, it is PBO. And since we rarely get a glimpse of FLOTUS in Hawaii, I’m hoping that means she’s lying by the pool, listening to the nearby surf, letting the breeze ruffle her hair, and sipping a tropical cocktail, complete with umbrella and pineapple slice!🙂
Goodnight TOD ….
#TrustBarack
#RestoreHOPE
#TheResistance
Two other parting messages …..
That’s what we all have to remember: #IAmUnstoppable
Goodnight, TODville. Tomorrow is another day!
This is where I come for hope and I am never disappointed. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone here. You are family just like the President.
Our POTUS protecting the environment. Preserving it for future generations
Interesting article here this morning: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-it-means-if-trump-names-china-a-currency-manipulator/ar-BBxGdiR?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=spartandhp First because they clearly state that what Trump says is “not true” about China manipulating currency.
I am no financial person by a long shot, but I have often wondered if Trump’s attacks on China are tied to the belief that he owes them a ton of money? Would he start a war of sorts… to keep from paying his loans? I am of the belief that there is nothing he won’t do to America to further his own personal interests.
Good morning TOD, I hope you’ve had somewhat happy holidays thus far with the ones you love.
Good morning, TOD ohana. I came across this quote yesterday and sums up my feelings about the end of the Obama era in the White House: “It’s better to smile because it happened than to cry because it’s over.”
I assume that the Defense Department’s departure ceremony will be carried on C-span (yes?). This is the one time in many years, I’ll bet, that there will be real emotion and appreciation behind the pomp and circumstance.
I am still laughing over the recent poll that once again names PBO as the Most Admired Man in America and Hillary Clinton (for the 21st time) the Most Admired Woman. The carnival barker cares more about this than winning (sort of) the presidency. His entire run was an exercise in vanity and this report will gall him.
Have a lovely day, everyone. Be thankful for everyday that you are here to share your life with those you love. Tragedy and loss can hit anyone at any day at any time of the year. Be blessed and be grateful.
Good West Coast morning NW and TOD family.
I am of two emotions this morning.
One is of immense pride that PBO chose to protect these lands for our native brothers and sisters as well as our future generations. The other is of immense sadness when I think of Debbie Reynolds mourning her daughter so intensely that she suffered a stroke and left us to be with her daughter, Carrie Fisher.
We will miss every one who has transitioned in 2016.
Hug your love ones and your friends when you can 💕
Morning everyone! Spines of steel…this is the kind of crap that we’ll have to be subject to for the next ? years
In response to this! (This is the crap I was referring to…not Tom Bonier’s perfect response)
Explained and expanded:) This time WITH FACTS!
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-foolish-farce-surrounding-food-stamp-fraud
I don’t know why so many people get fooled about food stamps or any of the programs that are difficult for them to get they think everyone who gets them are crooks. Maybe if they the media would tell the truth and compare the crooks to the corporate welfare give-away.
Great comment from this piece. Agreed
E.J.Wallace
28 DEC 2016 AT 11:59 PM
MSNBC and CNN must stop interviewing Trump surrogates bc they proffer the gibberish that Trump spouts. All it serves is to provide them a national platform for misinformation, a twisting of truth or an outright denial of it, and then turn the tables on the interviewer and talk over them so they can shout down the reality of the facts that we all see; conflicts of interest, treasonous conduct with a foreign enemy, lack of accountability regarding his businesses and his personal wealth and where it comes from. He is completely untrustworthy and says whatever is convenient in the moment, even when it makes no sense. The time for treating him or his surrogates like legitimate responsible guardians of our democracy is over. He is an aberration that rises to the height of a legitimate danger to the well-being of this country. Investigative reporting of him should be a 24/7 endeavor bc the sheer volume of his misbehavior and misconduct would fuel newspapers and 24/7 cable news networks for the next 4 years. A strong press is a democracy’s guardian against a despot. They need to step up their game and bear the mantle of that responsibility for the good of the country. Doing less than this inches us closer to a dictatorship. Inaction is a green light for despots. We need to act. Now.
OMG. And THIS AWESOME RESPONSE. Truth!
LCaution
29 DEC 2016 AT 4:57 AM
You ignore the refusal of the media to admit that they did anything wrong. The email server was a simple IT decision made to seem criminal by a GOP determined to prevent Hillary from being nominated or elected. That, the full use of Congressional and FBI powers, against the opposing candidate should have been the story. 3 speeches to GS, the “impropriety” of earning a living making speeches, then the Clinton Foundation of all things. How many hours, days, weeks did reporters spend reading email provided by FOIA or wikileaks? How many hours were spent on Hillary’s likability, her being “crowned” vs. Bernie’s lifetime of non-accomplishment? Only two reporters, late in the game, focused on Trump’s Foundation, business dealings. Neither got the coverage the emails did. The media take refuge in being disliked by left, right, and center. They refuse to acknowledge their dependence on the daily memes, controversies, trivialities of campaigning. Access and political gossip do not make a free, independent, responsible press. The urge to destroy Clinton once and for all dominated political coverage while Berlusconi/Mussolini/Hitler was the real threat. The media treated the GS speeches as a sign of moral turpitude; they essentially laughed off Trump’s opener about Mexican rapists, never, ever treated it with the same seriousness as Clinton’s “flaws”. To say nothing of his wives, infidelities, business practices (did anybody interview those he’d worked with, against over 4 decades). Did Trump get an MBA from Wharton? Seems to be the kind of simple question a reporter should be able got answer.
How much coverage did the Jim Crow voting laws get? The Michigan replacement of city mayors and councils in majority-minority cities with unelected managers? Flint got coverage because of Maddow, then dropped off the radar because “email”.
Apologies for rambling, but I am thoroughly disgusted by the malfeasance of all the “respectable” media this past year and their pompous assertions that they have nothing to apologize for. Iraq redux.
And THIS is the crap that needs to STOP! The news media can’t have it both ways! They have ONE JOB, to factually inform the public, they need to DO IT!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028410094
Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration is still three weeks away, but the president-elect desperately wants Americans to believe he’s already racking up enormous successes – just as long as the public doesn’t look too closely at the details, which show his accomplishments are actually a mirage.
Late yesterday, for example, Politico published this piece, which said exactly what the Republican transition team wanted to see.
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the creation of 8,000 new private-sector jobs in the United States, including 5,000 that he says telecommunications company Sprint Corp. will be bringing back from “other countries.”
“We just had some very good news,” Trump told the transition press pool. “Because of what is happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They have taken them from other countries.”
In the same “announcement,” Trump boasted that he’s learned that a company called OneWeb was adding an additional 3,000 jobs – because of, you know, “what is happening and the spirit and the hope.”
The trouble, as Politico acknowledged soon after, is that Trump was pulling a scam he’s leaned on many times: those new jobs were announced months ago. The president-elect wanted credit for others’ work, hoping the public – and news organizations – wouldn’t notice.
If the trick sounds familiar, it’s because this wasn’t the first time Trump has executed the scam.
I have an idea. Because this man is a PATHOLOGICAL LIAR, how about we start there and work backwards to fact check! Let’s just determine that everything that comes out of his mouth is a LIE and also realize that he needs constant self congratulations for everything he does…MEDIA, that should help you, help us!
thanks for posting this important link, pf:)
Right ON!
BINGO! We have a winner!
Good East Coast Morning TODVille.
I must report that at 10:27pm last night, Jacquelineoboomer posted a picture here which would have sent shock waves to my spine had my eyes laid on it.
Thank God that I say it only this morning, after coffee.
Jacquelineoboomer, https://assets.dnainfo.com/generated/photo/2015/02/bald-eagle-1422996533.jpg/larger.jpg
Okay, I don’t remember posting that bald eagle picture last night (although it doesn’t look scary to me, so maybe)! Perhaps “shock waves to my spine” should happen this morning.
Sorry, in any case!
Kind of a weird morning for me, though. Woke up too early and went back to sleep. Before waking up again, I had a Bad Trump Dream. People I worry about in real life were in it (but okay), some of my dearly departed were in it, Trump and Putin were in it. And my thoughts in the dream or as I was coming out of it drifted to the fact that Putin has had some people killed in Russia who didn’t serve his purposes, and I was thinking he’d do that to Trump here, when he became useless to him, and we’d be at war. And then I woke up.
So, yeah: COFFEE.
I know. The bad results of these elections pierce people’s dreams! Night and day, for good measure. A constant nightmare. At least one can wake up from a bad dream.
Hi TODers.
Thank you, Nerdy.
(((((((((((((((((((Chips)))))))))))))))
Another idea about “What’s wrong with the MSM?”
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/12/yes-media-spent-election-teaching
Good Morning Everybody.
JER, good morning and thanks for the uplifting video. I needed it badly. {{{HUGS}}}
Very Important Questions….I do believe this is part of what drove Maxine Waters to say NO!
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/28/1613635/-What-are-Democrats-prepared-to-do
Why do Democratic presidents only get to have their Supreme Court nominees considered for three of the four years of the term to which the American people elected them, but Ronald Reagan got a nominee not only considered but approved in his final year, by a Democratic Senate no less?
Why do Democratic candidates for president have to win the popular vote by a boatload to overcome the structural advantage Republicans have in the electoral college?
In the run up to elections, when a foreign power seeks to interfere by supporting one candidate, why do Democratic elected officials go out of their way to avoid looking partisan, while Republicans take every opportunity to advance their party?
Why do Democrats appoint Republicans to sensitive positions in the executive branch—even those that can act to influence the next election—but Republicans do not reciprocate?
Why are Republicans able to win veto-proof majorities in a state legislature when more voters chose a Democrat in that year’s elections. Read that again and think about how absolutely undemocratic it is.
Why do Republicans have no compunction about essentially undoing the results of an election for governor by stripping the office of much of its power in a lame duck session?
Republicans play by one set of rules, and Democrats by another. That’s not how a democracy is supposed to work. Our democracy isn’t working. To paraphrase what Sean Connery’s dying character said in The Untouchables:
What are Democrats prepared to do?
Unfortunately when the DEMs Senate & House were in power for most of the 50’s, 60’s. 70’s, 80’s and 90’s they did some of the same things to Republicans although not as aggrecious as what the GOP is doing now. The Dems gerrymandered back then until the GOP gradually has taken over thanks to RW radio and lazy media. I have come to the realization that our so-called Democracy has been broken for a long time, long before you or I were born. The ONLY difference is the DEMs will help the working class and poor..always have. The GOP has always been for the wealthy…always have.
I don’t think there is or will ever be a MIDDLE ground. I am ready to fight for the poor, working class and middle class so that the wealthy is prevented from destroying this country completely. Like so many of my generation, PBO opened my eyes to politics and what this country can truly be if we are willing to fight for it. I wish we could open the eyes of the young people and disenfranchised that change does not happen with a President it happens from the ground up and spreads out. I learned from this election the family values Republicans and the religious right-Evangelicals are phoneys after voting overwhelmingly for Trump a non-Christian, wife who posed nude, several marriages and affairs, disrespect for women, embraces vulgarity, and will sell out this country by embracing a communist list Putin.
GM TODville.
Nice late afternoon/evening for the First Family and friends yesterday…
Links to (underwhelming) pool reports:
News article (with photos):
That WP fact check came in handy.
http://progressiveerupts.blogspot.com/2016/12/just-so-you-know.html
No, President Obama does not practice respectability politics
So many people use the phrase despite not knowing its meaning
By Brando Simeo Starkey
Do me a favor — lower your head in shame if you’ve ever accused someone of committing a transgression despite not being able to correctly define what said transgression entails. Well, if you’ve ever criticized President Barack Obama for practicing respectability politics, your chin had better be slouched against your chest.
I hear a lot about Obama supposedly practicing respectability politics. Most recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates claimed as such in his Atlantic cover story piece, My President Was Black. Coates lauded the president for a speech he delivered at Howard University, partly because it omitted “his usual riff on respectability politics.” Others have committed this sin, such as CNN journalist Nia-Malika Henderson. Writing for The Washington Post in 2014, she oddly credited Obama for practicing respectability politics less frequently than he had in the past despite him never practicing it in the first place. Such high-profile accusations have led the masses to echo these sentiments. Search the phrase on Twitter, and see various tweets of people maligning Obama for championing respectability politics:
None of these people know what the phrase respectability politics means. I wrote a long-form piece on respectability politics in which I define it.
The problem with indicting Obama for practicing respectability politics is that he never tells black people to reform their behavior to elicit better appraisals from white people. Obama promotes racial uplift, the idea that black people should pursue personal and collective improvement in their own self-interest.
petesouza — Coming tomorrow: my annual Year in Photographs. This one of the President with Evie Cushman will certainly be included.
Can’t wait.
By the way, JER, thank you for the BET video posted above. I watched it this morning and enjoyed every minute of it.
Ooooh yeah!! Can’t wait.
BA-BOOM
#TrustBarack …. and the show is long from over of just how dangerous it is to cross this man ……..
Recall that PBO ordered a comprehensive review of Russian interference, going back several election cycles. So this took some time but I expect a FULL report that is going to leave a BURN.
So it begins. Just my opinion, but I would imagine that American diplomats and ambassadors have been told to leave Russia also.
Yes, I think you’re right. This has severely damaged diplomatic relations. And it leaves the GOP and their witless leader in a very clear BIND.
Hope all of you are having a good day ….
Sen Ben Cardin is our ranking member on foreign relations committee. Please let him know you support his move:
WOW, here it is:
Now, let us wait and see how the Jackass-Elect will express his DEEP DISAPPOINTMENT in POTUS’s decision to punish Russia for its interference in our elections.
I wish as the Russian spies pack and leave, they could take one Jackass-Elect with them!
Give it a f***. You should have gone hard against the Jackass when he was running instead of contributing to taking down HRC.