President Obama poses for snapshots with people in a midwest cafe, summer 2012 – via Instagram
Partly it’s the spontaneity of the event. You know that Barack Obama grins broadly into the cellphone camera or other small, amateur electronic camera on the other side. The people on either side of him grin, too.
Partly it’s the ease with which the President of the United States becomes just Barry posing for pictures when people ask him to.
Partly it’s the serendipity of someone being wholly out of location to take the grinning teeth photo, but having the presence of mind to snap a picture from the back, showing not only the president at ease, but the people posing with him wholly comfortable with the situation — ‘hold on to each other, everybody smile . . . [click].’
Partly it’s the completely unexpected nature of the happenstance photo. Were it posed, the flags would be bigger, posted correctly; the hand sanitizer would be moved out of the way. Were it posed, the notices under the mints for sale would be moved, so the camera could see the other side.
I’m also fond of the wallpaper border that makes the top frame of the picture.
Someone sent me a link to the photo a few weeks ago. I wish I could pin it down to location and date, and to who took the photo.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Obama’s latest attack ad basically says that if corporations are people, then Bain Capital committed treason. This is the ad in which Mitt Romney sings “America the Beautiful” while we see a thundering denunciation of Romney’s record of outsourcing jobs and hiding his money in foreign banks and tax shelters. It might be the meanest ad since Lyndon Johnson said Barry Goldwater was going to blow up the world, and every word of Obama’s ad is true, even if Romney’s singing is a little off key.
Romney’s team tried to change the subject by accusing Obama of trying to change the subject and even demanded an apology that he very quickly did not get. All Romney’s response proved was that Hunter S. Thompson’s axiom that “true happiness in politics is a wide open hammer-shot on a poor bastard who knows he’s trapped, but can’t flee” were the truest words ever written about politics.
When Ari Fleischer complaining on CNN that Obama was being too rough, Paul Begala could barely contain his glee: “I’m heartened if we’ve gone from toothless in Ari’s eyes to ruthless. I’d rather be tough. These are tough times.”
Watch that space.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
After redistricting, we live and vote in Johnson’s district, Texas District 30. Johnson won a three-way race, pulling in more than 50% of the total vote against Clayton and local political activist Barbara Mallory Callaway. Clayton had a lot of signs up. I got personal calls from his campaign early on, as opposed to the annoying robo-calls we got from Johnson in the last couple of days before the primary. Incumbency is tough to beat, and even a great campaign ad won’t do it.
Where was Taj when we were in the 24th District, and we needed a good Democrat to beat Kenny Marchant?
It is a good advertisement. Voters would probably like to see a lot more like it, to explain to them who the candidates are, and what the issues in the election are. Ads of this type live in the endangered species zone, when attack ads and negative advertising carry so much clout.
Early voting for the twice-delayed* Texas primary elections opens this week. The election is set for May 29.
Happy to see the Texas Democratic Party sending out notices that voters won’t be turned away from the polls. It’s a clear effort to deflate the voting discouragement campaign of State Attorney General Greg Abbott, Gov. Rick Perry, and the Republicans of the Texas Lege.
On Monday, the polls will open for early voting for the May 29th Democratic Primary Election. We’ll be selecting the Democratic nominees who will lead the charge towards taking back our state in 2012.
Use the same documents that you’ve used in the past to vote.No photo ID is required! The photo voter id legislation is not in effect for this election. All you need is:
I’d be interested to see that the Republican Party in Texas is doing something similar. They keep booting me off their lists. Anybody got a similar letter from them, especially one showing how the Texas Voter Identification law does not apply to this primary election?
_____________
* The elections were delayed by federal court orders. Texas is a place that historically discriminated against minority voters, and so under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, reapportionments by the legislature must be approved by the Justice Department or a federal court as complying with the nondiscrimination laws. AG Abbott tried to do an end run around Justice, suing for approval as a first step. As part of its War on Democracy, the Texas Lege wrote a spectacularly Gerrymandered reapportionment plan, depriving Texas Hispanics from new representation despite the dramatic increase in their populations. Consequently the federal courts balked at quick approval. Instead, they asked for more information. In the delay, the Washington courts ordered the federal court in San Antonio to draw up a more fair plan, giving at least three new seats to districts where Hispanics hold broad sway.
Litigation against the Texas Jim Crow Voter Identification law is separate.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson told Charlie Rose that he’s grateful President Obama didn’t offer the Simpson-Bowles budget balancing plan, since Republicans would then have to oppose every part of it, reflexively, as part of their “hate Obama completely” policy.
Pat Bagley uncoded the formula, too.
Pat Bagley, Primordial gas politics, Salt Lake Tribune, May 3, 2012
The danger? The danger is Obama will propose something to save America, and the Republicans will oppose it in a knee-jerk fashion. Some say it’s happened already.
And all of a sudden, you find yourself naked, cold and wet, and stuck in a swamp. Can you console yourself that the flies are tasty?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Quote from Sen. John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960
You can read the entire original speech by Sen. John F. Kennedy here, at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. There’s more defense of his being considered a liberal, and the good that liberals do. It’s almost quaint the way he defends Adlai Stevenson.
Why do you wave the flag, help old ladies cross busy streets, keep children safe, and sing the “Star Spangled Banner?”
Clifford Berryman drew some of the best and most famous political cartoons ever, for newspapers in Washington, D.C., over a career of more than 50 years. Berryman drew the cartoon of Teddy Roosevelt and the bear cub TR refused to shoot, that caused the story of TR and the bear to become famous, which led to the creation of the “Teddy bear” stuffed animal we all know today, for one example.
Our National Archives featured an exhibit of Berryman cartoons on running for office. The exhibit is long gone, but the materials from the exhibit live on, on line, waiting for students to study, and teachers to use for presentations, assignments, and tests.
Some of the cartoons seem awfully prescient to today:
"Nearing the End of the Primaries," cartoon by Clifford Berryman published May 3, 1920. Caption from the Archives: "Today candidates usually secure their party’s nomination during the primary season, and the nominating convention merely provides the party’s official stamp of approval. In 1920, however, when the primary process was still new, it did not produce a clear winner for the Republican Party. As the Republican convention neared, there was no front-runner for the G.O.P. Presidential nomination. This cartoon shows the frazzled Republican elephant surrounded by conflicting newspaper headlines while the Democratic donkey makes pressing inquiries. Warren G. Harding was eventually chosen as the Republican nominee. U.S. Senate Collection Center for Legislative Archives"
It’s not really a fair comparison, is it? In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama was in a hotly contested race for the Democratic nomination to be president. His team worked to get the crowds out, at a rally before Super Tuesday.
In 2012, it’s former Gov. Mitt Romney who is in a hotly-contested race for the nomination — but of the GOP, not the Democrats. So it’s not really a fair comparison, Democrats against Republicans, just before Super Tuesday, is it?
Still, we see these two photos making the rounds. These two photos were taken four years and 20 days apart:
Political rallies for presidential candidates, in Detroit, Michigan, 2012, and Hartford, Connecticut, 2008
Oh, that’s not straight up, is it. One was in Detroit, the other in Hartford. Okay, let’s compare Detroit rallies. Here’s Mitt Romney in Detroit:
And here is Obama in Detroit in 2008, in Joe Louis Arena:
If you’re a red-blooded American, you’ll find Obama’s speech in Detroit frustrating, in retrospect. Where Obama said America can’t wait to solve problems, Republicans since then have said “Yes, We Can Wait,” and they’ve frustrated action to fix so many problems. We’ve lost so much time.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Robert F. Kennedy speech at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, March 18, 1968 - Photo by George Silk, Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images
RFK said this in 1968. In a speech I heard today it was quoted and it stirred me.
Too much and for too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over eight hundred billion dollars a year, but that GNP — if we judge the United States of America by that — that GNP counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
Kennedy delivered these words in an address at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, on March 18, 1968.
Perry imagines a “war on religion,” based on his bigoted, anti-liberty views and some gross disinformation about what the rules are for kids praying in school.
What are the odds that, if elected, Perry would say, “Oops, I was wrong; I won’t do what that ad suggests?”
Perry’s offensive and erroneous text:
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage.
Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.
I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.
I’ll take Barney Frank over Rick Perry any day. Barney Frank is twice the man Rick Perry is, especially in standing up for the Constitution and freedom for all Americans.
I’ll take Barbara Jordan over Rick Perry. She was twice the person Rick Perry is. It seems to me that Perry plays with fire when he makes an ad that targets genuine Texas heroes like Jordan.
Is Perry going negative just because he’s losing, or is it really going to be that dirty a campaign? This man shouldn’t be governor of Texas, and he has no business running for president.
Where are the Republicans to stop this waste of time and money?
I get e-mail, from the Obama bunch; can you believe it?:
Ed —
It’s no surprise that professional conspiracy theorists are still on the birth-certificate warpath — but now elected officials are getting their backs.
Yesterday, four Republicans in the New Hampshire State House supported a hearing requested by a group of birthers who want President Obama officially removed from the state’s primary ballot.
It’s not clear whether all this is a smokescreen or whether these dead-enders actually believe this stuff. But they aren’t letting the facts get in their way — one group in Arizona has even demanded that the President “release the microfiche” of his birth certificate.
Sadly, I don’t have any microfiches on hand, but we have the next best thing: In honor of birthers everywhere, we’re re-releasing the campaign’s limited-edition “Made in the USA” mugs.
Here’s what one of the state representatives backing the effort had to say about yesterday’s hearing: “I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I could take [the long-form birth certificate] apart and see that it was fraudulent.”
Well, I won’t argue with one part of that statement.
There’s clearly nothing we can do to satisfy this crowd — or anyone else who insists on wasting time and energy on nonsense like this.
But when it starts to make your head hurt, I’ve found the best remedy is to have some tea in my “Made in the USA” mug.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Ed —
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 