The Obama Diary

On This Day: President Barack Obama lays a Presidential challenge coin on a grave in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., May 30, 2011. Section 60 is reserved for military personnel who have lost their lives while fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Today (all times Eastern)

* President Obama appears on Kelly and Michael - check your local listings here

10:15: President Obama meets with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Oval Office

11:0: The President meets with the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force

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11:15 EDT: President Obama Makes a Statement

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1:0: Jay Carney briefs the press

2:15: The President attends a hurricane preparedness meeting, FEMA Headquarters

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O.B.A.M.A - Obviously Better At Managing Adorables. pic.twitter.com/2oIA1RH1nL

— amk4obama (@amk4obama) May 30, 2025

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Fareed Zakaria: Obama’s leadership is right for today

…. Obama is battling a knee-jerk sentiment in Washington in which the only kind of international leadership that means anything is the use of military force. “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” he said in his speech Wednesday at West Point.

A similar sentiment was expressed in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a strong leader who refused to intervene in the Suez crisis, the French collapse in Vietnam, two Taiwan Strait confrontations and the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

At the time, many critics blasted the president for his passivity and wished that he would be more interventionist. A Democratic Advisory Council committee headed by Acheson called Eisenhower’s foreign policy “weak, vacillating, and tardy.” But Eisenhower kept his powder dry, confident that force was not the only way to show strength. “I’ll tell you what leadership is,” he told his speechwriter. “It’s persuasion — and conciliation — and education — and patience . It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know — or believe in — or will practice.”

Maybe that’s the Obama Doctrine.

Full article here

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Fred Kaplan: Obama Lays Siege to His Critics

President Obama’s speech at West Point on Wednesday morning could be called a tribute to common sense, except that the sense it made is so uncommon. The ensuing cable pundits’ complaints—that it was insufficiently “muscular” or “robust”—only proved how necessary this speech was.

Obama’s point was not (contrary to some commentators’ claims) to draw a “middle-of-the-road” line between isolationism and unilateralism. That’s a line so broad almost anyone could walk it.

The president’s main point was to emphasize that not every problem has a military solution; that the proper measure of strength and leadership is not merely the eagerness to deploy military power; that, in fact, America’s costliest mistakes have stemmed not from restraint but from rushing to armed adventures “without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without leveling with the American people about the sacrifice required.”

More here

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Graduating cadets listen to President Obama deliver the commencement address at West Point, May 28, 2025 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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NPR: Transcript And Audio: President Obama’s Full NPR Interview

NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed President Obama on Wednesday about foreign policy, including his approaches to Syria, Ukraine and China, as well as his remaining White House priorities and his effort to close Guantanamo Bay prison. A full transcript of the interview follows:

STEVE INSKEEP: I want to begin this way. You’re here at this historic place, trying to speak with a sense of history. And I was thinking of past presidents that I know you have studied and commented on. And a couple came to mind who were able to express what they were trying to do in the world in about a sentence. Reagan wanted to roll back communism by whatever means. Lincoln has a famous letter in which he says, I would save the union by the shortest means under the Constitution. As you look at the moment of history that you occupy, do you think you can put into a sentence what you are trying to accomplish in the world?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m not sure I can do it in a sentence because we’re fortunate in many ways. We don’t face an existential crisis. We don’t face a civil war. We don’t face a Soviet Union that is trying to rally a bloc of countries and that could threaten our way of life. Instead, what we have is, as I say in the speech, this moment in which we are incredibly fortunate to have a strong economy that is getting stronger, no military peer that threatens us, no nation-state that anytime soon intends to go to war with us. But we have a world order that is changing very rapidly and that can generate diffuse threats, all of which we have to deal with.

More here

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My Brother’s Keeper Task Force Report to the President - PDF

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Greg Sargent: GOP retreat on Obamacare continues apace

A new report this morning confirms that House Republicans are likely to delay plans to offer an alternative to Obamacare until after the elections; that multiple Republican candidates are retreating from repeal; and that they are increasingly mouthing support for the law’s general goals. Once again: There’s no real policy space for a meaningful alternative, but the base still sees repeal as its lodestar, yet everyone else opposes repeal, forcing Republicans to claim they’d scrap it and replace it with something or other doing all the popular things in it, without saying what.

More here

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Why is it that most of the people calling for Shinseki’s head have never had to deal with VA, while those that have dealt with VA aren’t?

— john miller (@deaconmill) May 30, 2025

McCain is right. Treatment of veterans in Arizona is disgraceful. If only there were a prominent veteran in Arizona who could have helped

— Donald J. Drumpf (@RealDonalDrumpf) May 30, 2025

#maddow I think John McCain should resign. This VA thing happened in his state. Where was he? On the Sunday talkies

— Pat Fuller (@bannerite) May 29, 2025

Huge standing ovation and applause for VASec Shinseki at the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans here at the Hyatt. These guys love him — philewing (@philewing) May 30, 2025

Reporters follow VA Secretary Eric Shinseki after his remarks to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans pic.twitter.com/6cuFPBSbem — Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) May 30, 2025

Today’s speech: Secretary Shinseki on Homelessness Among Veterans http://t.co/wB1zRH2dTK — meta (@metaquest) May 30, 2025

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Justin Wolfers (NYT): Deceptive Dip in G.D.P. Points to Perils of Election Forecasting

An economic report issued [yesterday] provides a good example of the hazards facing election forecasters. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that in the first quarter of this year, Gross Domestic Product, a broad indicator of the health of the economy, shrank at an annual rate of 1 percent. Even worse, an alternative and more accurate measure, called Gross Domestic Income, shrank at an annual rate of 2.3 percent. If that persisted, we’d call it a sharp recession.

But no one is using the R-word. Nor should they. Markets have taken the news in their stride, and few economists have changed their view that the economy is growing and will continue to through 2014. Likewise, consumers remain confident about their economic prospects. Their confidence rests partly on other indicators that suggested far better growth throughout the quarter, such as nonfarm payrolls, which grew by 569,000 over the same period.

More here

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The 16 questions @NBCNews should have asked Edward Snowden but didn’t. http://t.co/MMFIslVJhY — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) May 29, 2025

MLK and Marlon Brando pic.twitter.com/ng8S25mzFZ — Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) May 29, 2025

Guys steals 1.7 million documents. Forgets to print out e-mails he exchanged w/NSA officials expressing concerns abt NSA programs #oops — Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) May 30, 2025

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National Journal: Lies, Damn Lies, and Global-Warming Rules

The president is about to take a major step to fight global warming. Here’s what you need to know.

President Obama promised to take action on global warming with or without Congress’s permission. Next week, he’ll tell the world how he plans to do it.

The administration is preparing to release the central pillar of Obama’s climate-change agenda: a proposal for far-reaching rules that will require power companies to cut carbon emissions.

The rules will mark the most significant federal action on climate change since Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate four years ago, and they’re Obama’s best shot at adding broad action on global warming to his legacy.

The rules will also touch off a political war of the first order, offering battleground for environmentalists, industry groups, and politicians to fight over the nation’s energy future.

Here’s what to watch for when the administration pulls back the curtain.

More here

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Must Read: Sandy Hook principal’s daughter on Joe the Plumber’s ‘Dead Kid’ callousness: http://t.co/2XjQfDmdBX #notonemore

— Moms Demand Action (@MomsDemand) May 29, 2025

#gunsense pic.twitter.com/upIaEOb9cq — Pedro (@gabino_58) May 29, 2025

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ThinkProgress: Redskins’ Twitter Campaign To Defend Their Name Goes About As Well As You’d Expect

The Washington Redskins — desperate to defend the name that Native Americans, members of Congress, a majority of the United States Senate, religious leaders, civil rights groups, several current and former NFL players, United Nations Human Rights representatives, and even President Obama have said should be changed because it is a “dictionary-defined” racial slur — started a Twitter campaign to rally support Thursday afternoon.

It started with this tweet asking fans to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has made a habit of chiding the team over its name, how they felt:

More here

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“I’d rather be born black, American, female, in the 20th century, and I was. What luck I have!” —Maya Angelou: http://t.co/uhtdTQ3f33

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 28, 2025

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USA Today: Biden to attend U.S. World Cup soccer match

The United States men’s World Cup soccer team will have a particularly vocal fan when it takes on Ghana next month: Joe Biden.

The vice president will attend the U.S.-Ghana match on June 16 in Natal, Brazil, as part of a trip that will also take him to Colombia and the Dominican Republic as well as Brazil.

More here

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The #Clippers are being purchased by the ex-head of Microsoft, so count on next year’s team being slow, error-prone and full of viruses.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 29, 2025

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I’m not sure whether to love this video, or be freaked out by it:

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I shouldn’t laugh, but:

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On This Day

Sen Obama attends a rally in Great Falls, Montana, whilst campaining in the race for the White House. May 30, 2025

Sen. Obama addresses a rally at The Four Seasons Arena May 30, 2025 in Great Falls, Montana

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