Quarterback Barrett Trotter #14 of the Auburn Tigers holds a sign depicting President Obama during the game against the LSU Tigers, October 22
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Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast): Hey, suddenly “leading from behind” is looking pretty good, isn’t it? This instantly infamous phrase, spit like rusty nails out of the mouths of neocons and other foreign-policy bigwigs ever since it appeared in that New Yorker article …. described a way of conducting multilateral foreign policy that has achieved electrifying results.
…. a truly multilateral intervention to rid the world of one of its most tyrannical dictators, undertaken with no loss of American life? This is a first. It’s a very big deal….
…. let us note how the Obama record on Libya compares with the neocon record. Libya was the great case of neocon hypocrisy in the Bush years. The neocons were supposed to be different from the Kissingerian realists, right? The neocons cared about spreading democracy and freedom. But all they spread in Libya was more tyranny…..
…. The Republican electorate may eat up potshots at Obama for being weak, but I doubt the broader public is buying it. A president who iced bin Laden and has overseen the ousters of two leading autocrats (and a couple of other minor ones) is not weak. Leading from behind, the sneerers forgot, is still leading.
Jill Lawrence (Atlantic): The Republicans aiming for the White House might be well-advised to pack it in on foreign policy for a while and cede the field to President Obama…..
…. In a world ever more complicated, dangerous and economically fragile, he can make a strong argument that he deserves re-election based on his record as commander in chief…..
…. Obama has an unmatched record of targeting and killing terrorists and helping others to do so ….. What’s more, whether it’s killing terrorists or navigating the Arab Spring, Obama has been for the most part quiet and judicious and has avoided igniting anti-American sentiment across the globe….
…. Obama has taken enormous incoming for saying that pre-1967 borders with land swaps should be the foundation for Mideast peace talks … yet he recently intervened to help rescue six Israelis during an attack on their embassy in Cairo and opposed the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Obama deserved a “badge of honor” for his stand at the U.N. and told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Obama is as much a friend to Israel as Bush and other presidents.
…. in looking at him as commander in chief and leader of the free world, the GOP would prefer that people ignore what’s been going on in the real world. It brings to mind the old Marx Brothers joke: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
President Obama leaves Joint Base Andrews outside Washington after playing golf, October 22
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Michael Williams (The Guardian): President Obama’s latest foreign intervention in Libya reflects an evolution of the American way of war and the crystallisation of the “Obama Doctrine”. Gone are the “shock and awe”, trillion-dollar campaigns of the Bush era – right on cue, the president has followed Thursday’s news of Muammar Gaddafi’s death with Friday’s announcement of the final pullout of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In this age of austerity and public fatigue with foreign exploits, the Obama White House has diligently combined military force, technology, intelligence assets and patience to rack up an unassailable list of “wins” for the president on foreign affairs.
The success and strength of the the president’s doctrine lies in the fact that it is not doctrinaire. The Obama Doctrine is based upon the very pragmatic concept that the United States should defend primary and secondary interests when it can, but that there is no hard-and-fast rule on intervention. There is no “off limits” zone à la the Monroe Doctrine, no Truman-esque hard line such as the containment of the USSR that led to the Vietnam war. The Obama Doctrine is also a far cry from the Bush Doctrine’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” mentality, which held that democracy promotion could be achieved via direct regime change – so saddling the US with $1tn of debt and an unwinnable war in Iraq.
The Bush Doctrine played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands; the Obama Doctrine killed Bin Laden…..
I promise, I’m not making this up – edp4bho let me know about the latest Fox/Teabagger outrage (even Brian ‘serious journalist’ Williams ‘reported’ it): the President held his right hand up for .23 seconds during the ‘family’ photo at the United Nations this week (he was jokingly gesturing towards the photographers, asking them if they had enough photos yet), obscuring the face of the man beside him for, well, .23 seconds.
Honest, this is actually being reported as news!
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Well, true, it’s right up there with invading Iraq on false pretenses.
Actually, I love this stuff – it shows just how desperate the President’s opponents are. I mean, is that all they’ve got?
President Barack Obama, Ruby Bridges, and representatives of the Norman Rockwell Museum view Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” hanging in a West Wing hallway near the Oval Office, July 15, 2011. Bridges is the girl portrayed in the painting. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
AOL (2010): When Ruby Bridges arrived for her first day at William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans 50 years ago, she thought it was Mardi Gras. People lined the streets, shouting and throwing things – just like a Carnival parade. But these people weren’t celebrating.
At 6 years old, Bridges had been unwittingly thrust onto the grand stage of American history. Her parents had volunteered her to be the first black child to attend an all-white school in the South. Local law enforcement refused to protect her from the unruly mobs that surrounded her school, so every day she was escorted by four federal marshals – the scene immortalized by Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With.”
That first day, all the parents had rushed into the building and taken their kids out — effectively boycotting the school. The school didn’t quite know what to do; Ruby was told to just sit in the principal’s office until it was time to go home.
“I remember thinking, ‘This school is easy,’” Bridges told AOL News.
Since then, Bridges grew up, raised four sons and worked as a travel agent before returning to a career as an educational activist that she had started at such a young age. But while her educational career eventually subsided into a normal New Orleans childhood – albeit one charged by forced integration – those exceptional first days in school had shaped her for life.
Des Moines Register: Better Homes and Gardens will feature First Lady Michelle Obama on the cover of its August issue — the first public figure to grace the magazine’s cover in 48 years.
Obama will be the focus of an article on healty eating for children. The issue will hit newsstands July 19.
Editors from the magazine, which is owned by Des Moines-based Meredith Corp., and the first lady co-hosted a picnic in May for D.C. fifth-graders. The magazine features photos of the picnic and an interview with Obama about her efforts to promote healthful habits.
President Obama speaks to a crowd gathered inside a hangar at Muniz Air National Guard Base, shortly after his arrival in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 14
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A very, very, very big thank you again to Henry VIII (!) for visiting us today (here) – thrilled to have you here, Mr Healy!
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Bye bye Muppets, hello the Living Dead…..
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Worried about Huntsman?
Nate Silver: …. polling worse than Mr. Gingrich was Mr. Huntsman. About half of the views Republicans expressed about Mr. Huntsman were negative, producing an Unacceptably Index of 51 percent.
night everyone
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A very, very, very big thank you again to Henry VIII (!) for visiting us today (here) – thrilled to have you here, Mr Healy!
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Bye bye Muppets, hello the Living Dead…..
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Worried about Huntsman?
Nate Silver: …. polling worse than Mr. Gingrich was Mr. Huntsman. About half of the views Republicans expressed about Mr. Huntsman were negative, producing an Unacceptably Index of 51 percent.
Thank you Suzanne
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See you tomorrow