How Much Riboflavin Are You Getting?

Because America is apparently full of illiterate and ignorant housewives who can't decipher a food label, Michelle Obama is here to help you.

Who knew grocery shopping was so filled with drama and tension:

"So there you stood, alone in some aisle in a store, the clock ticking away at the precious little time remaining to complete your weekly grocery shopping, and all you could do was scratch your head, confused and bewildered, and wonder, is there too much sugar in this product? Is 50 percent of the daily allowance of riboflavin a good thing or a bad thing? And how on Earth could this teeny little package contain five whole servings? 

It hard to conceive of such nerve-wracking stress at the ol' Super One Foods.  The clock is ticking!  There is so little time!  Am I getting enough riboflavin?  The decisions!

Of course, now that Obamacare has forced people to work fewer hours there will be more time to decipher those pesky labels because according to Joe Biden, you just don't have to keep that job!  You can stay home with your kids or linger in the grocery store aisles deciphering those oh-so-confusing labels.

Who knew that making the font bigger on the calorie count would solve all my problems!

Honestly, don't these people have something real to do besides continuing to point out how stupid we all are?  How many food labels do you think Michelle Obama reads?  We're supposed to believe she identifies and relates to us?  The little people?

She wears me out.

Our Ironic President

There's a certain kind of irony about a man who sits in Hawaii on a two-week taxpayer funded vacation and lambasts others for going "home for the holidays" and not taking care of their duties.

Added bonus:  he left Michelle there.

Seriously?

(via Memeorandum)

Loose Thoughts

I'm trying to get back into the school groove.  I just want to come home every afternoon and take a nap.  I don't, though.  Then I'd be up all night.  I don't remember it taking this long to get back into the swing of things last year,though.  Oh wait.  It's only been a week.  Damn.  Seems like longer.

Since I'm too tired to come up with much original material, lets hit some links that caught my eye.

I broke faith with Peggy Noonan after she waxed rhapsodic about Obama in 2008 but she does have an interesting idea for a new Republican ad:

Republicans should do their own spot, now—one that's comic and sweet. Grandma in the wheelchair is speeding on a downward slope toward a cliff. She looks terrified. Suddenly a young guy who looks like Clark Kent—that is, like Paul Ryan—springs forward, puts his body between the wheelchair and the edge, and stops it. She looks up at him, smiles, touches his face with her hand. He smiles, turns the chair around and begins to push her back to safety. "Romney-Ryan. Trying to get things back on firm ground." 

That's pretty good, I think, except I'd change the catch line to "Romney-Ryan.  We can turn this around."   Something to that effect.  More forceful.

I like it.

Elsewhere, Bride of Rove got a giggle out of me today.  I love it when she gets on those rants:

This is embarrasing. You’ve got Biden setting new lows with the ethnic dialect and crazy-eyed babble speak. Wasserman who has no idea if Democrats are, in fact, part of the party she is in charge of, the head of the Senate accusing Romney of not paying taxes citing a rumor he heard … Holy mother of god, people! Did Romney kill his dog? Obama freaking ATE HIS DOG. 

Her overall point, of course, is that this whole election business has run off the rails and people are acting, as she would say, "sprayed roach crazy."

I can't recall ever seeing this country so polarized.  (I wasn't born during the Civil War - that might have been an exception.)  Obama's class warfare and demagoguery has divided people into the Obama camp, the Romney camp, and the I-Hate-All-Of-Them camp.  There are still some folks who are blissfully unaware of an imminent election but most of them will snap out of that soon as the airwaves become flooded with political ads.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, about 7% are still undecided.

Speaking of polls, what's up with these polls.  I can't believe it's this close.

It's a good thing I don't pay any attention to polls.  That's damn depressing is what that is.

I can't believe anyone would consider giving this guy four more years, much less "four more beers."

Speaking of that, Politicaljunkimom has this:

This is why they’re travelling with bottles of beer: to make a rather subversive point about Romney’s Mormonism. They could do it with coffee. Or soda. But beer is the most effective way to show how “out of touch” he is while they follow the “traditional All-American home brewing” methods. 

I’m not fooled. But how many would be? What’s next, a reporter pointing out that Romney wouldn’t hold a beer summit (thank God)? Or the usual test pre-election, “With whom would you rather sit and have a beer?” would have to be hypothetical since, you know, Romney doesn’t drink. How far will the media carry this? 

Wonder if he has an Oktoberfest brew?

A friend of mine expressed concern today that there will be a Christian backlash against Romney and Mormonism.  I thought we got past all that when Kennedy was elected but maybe across the country there is still some lingering mistrust.  In this day and age where we're all supposed to be so tolerant of everything, I can't believe Romney's faith would be a big issue, but you never know, I guess.

Pretty heady stuff.  Head over to Andy's Place for a brain break.  I know Michelle Obama has been branded as the second coming of Jackie Kennedy and the epitome of style but I don't see it.  This looks like she made a dress out of the tablecloth on the picnic table.

"A renewed sense of glamour,"?  Nope.  I don't see it.

Finally, Charles Krauthammer reflect on the Paul Ryan pick:

Image. Ryan, fresh and 42, brings youth, energy and vitality — the very qualities Obama projected in 2008 and has by now depleted. “Hope and change” has become “the other guy killed a steelworker’s wife.” From transcendence to the political gutter in under four years. A new Olympic record.

In Peggy Noonan's piece, referenced above, she suggested that Romney-Ryan go against convention and campaign together as the seem to complement and balance each other.  No question that their appearances last weekend were dynamic.  I don't think they'll do it, but Ryan's presence next to Romney adds a vitality to Romney that he sometimes otherwise lacks.

More Krauthammer:

Ryan’s importance is enhanced by his identity as a movement conservative. Reagan was the first movement leader in modern times to achieve the presidency. Like him, Ryan represents a new kind of conservatism for his time. 

I think we'll be watching Paul Ryan for years to come.

And that's just fine with me!

The election is still months away and much will unfold between now and then.  The debates, for one.  That'll be interesting.

Hang in there folks.  As will I.

Loose Thoughts

If you're looking for debate coverage you might head on over to Legal Insurrection or The Other McCain.   I.Just.Can't.  Meh.

I've been busy at work and real life.  I tried to watch the State of the Union, got three minutes in, and had to bail.  When Obama starts spewing crap about "fairness and equity" and how the "rich" should give "their fair share" I start seeing spiders and creepy crawling things in my head and my head starts to spin.  I had to turn it off.

Speaking of SOTU, what did you think of Michelle's dress?  I thought it was ill fitting but I'm no fashionista.  You'll usually find me in blue jeans and a sweatshirt.  I liked the color and I even liked the brooch, but I thought the straps crossing above the boobs looked weird.  I didn't think it was tailored well for her.  I've read some blogs that criticized her for dressing as if she was going to a cocktail party rather than a SOTU speech but that part doesn't bother me.  I just didn't think the dress fit well.  It's not exactly "for the common man," either, at an estimated $2,400.  Not a Target dress.

Let them eat arugula.

Charles Krauthammer has some thoughts on the SOTU:

It sounded like the Clinton years with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, thoroughly flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt — and a glaring absence of ideas.

Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It's now equality and fairness. That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe.

As for the Republicans, I'm sick of Newt and Romney going after each other.  When are we going to go after the incumbent, eh?  At this point I'd be just fine if they ate each other alive and Santorum came out on top.  

Surfing the links I see that Bride of Rove is struggling with some of the same issues.

Pundette is expecting Newt Fatigue to hit at any time.

As for me, tomorrow is Friday.  Centenary College will commemorate the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a 12 hour loop screening of the testimony of local Holocaust survivors Rose and Louis Van Thyn.  I'm going straight from work to see both of them.  If you're around here I'd encourage you to go.

Speaking of the Holocaust, heck out this stunning poll (H/T: Mike).

Steve and I are headed to Minden on Saturday for the kickoff of Mardi Gras season; the Fasching Carnivale and parade will be the highlight of the day, plus some shopping with Milly Rose!

Oh, and I'm going to test drive a Jeep when we go, too!  Yay!

Out.

Michelle Thinks You're Stupid

Michelle Obama thinks we are stupid.

Obama never takes a day off, she says. 

Seriously?

It's true...he has been campaigning for re-election ever since he took office. 

I guess golfing could be considered working.  If you're Phil Mickelson.  To date he's played at least 71 rounds of golf.  Obama - no Mickelson.

"He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him," she said. "This man doesn't take a day off."

Isn't this about the time of year we get news that they are headed to Maine for their annual vacation?  Or will it be Hawaii?  Or both?

Via Politico, she said the next two years of campaigning would be difficult for the Obamas and their supporters. "It is not going to be easy, and it is going to be long," she said. "Now more than ever we need your help to finish what we started."

 Finish what you started?  Lord, no.  No, thank you.

Richard Cohen Suffering from Palin Derangement Syndrome

Richard Cohen has an especially vitriolic attack on Sarah Palin this morning in his column at The Washington Post.  Cohen has apparently been sparked this morning by a HuffPo piece which criticizes Palin for taking a "cheap shot" at Michelle Obama.  Both Cohen and Geoffrey Dunn of HuffPo suggest Palin is an ignorant racist.

Cohen also manages to take a swipe at Cindy McCain:

It is Sarah Palin who brings back these memories [of America as an "apartheid nation"]. In her new book, she reportedly takes Michelle Obama to task for her supposedly infamous remark from the 2008 campaign: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Instantly, Republicans pounced. Among the first to do so was Cindy McCain, who said, "I have and always will be proud of my country." It was a cheap shot, but her husband's selection of Palin for the ticket and plenty of cheap shots from Palin ("death panels," etc.) were yet to come.

For all the explanation and walk backs of Michelle Obama's much discussed remark, I still contend that no matter the context, it still means the same thing.  She wasn't proud of America until Barack started doing well in the primaries. 

As much as Cohen chooses to criticize Palin for her failure to "appreciate the history of  the Obama family," it seems to me that Cohen is turning an equally blind eye to what Michelle's comment really meant.  If Palin doesn't appreciate the history of the Obamas, isn't it equally true that Michelle was not appreciative of American accomplishments or American history?

Yes, slavery was a nasty chapter in American history.  Yes, Michelle's ancestors were slaves. Does this preclude her from appreciating anything else about American history since then?  Or before?  According to Cohen, it does:

Why do politicians such as Palin and commentators such as Glenn Beck insist that African Americans go blank on their own history - as blank as apparently Palin and Beck are themselves? Why must they insist that blacks join them in embracing a repellent history that once caused America to go to war with itself?

Nobody is suggesting that African Americans "go blank on their own history."  In fact, last time I checked my calendar, February is devoted to African American history.  In fact, earlier this year Beck did a series on African America Founders to highlight the accomplishments of black founders not normally covered in American History classes.

No, all this comes down to is Cohen displaying his Palin Derangement Syndrome:

Sarah Palin teases that she might run for president. But she is unqualified - not just in the (let me count the) usual ways, but because she does not know the country. 

I'm guessing he isn't voting for Bristol in Dancing With the Stars.

Update:  Powerline concurs.

Obama Wasn't Liberal ENOUGH!

Is there anyone more clueless than Katrina vanden Heuvel about Tuesday's election?

Now look - I don't think Republican's ought to be gloating about this victory.  It's wonderful, thrilling, and historic, but (and I hate this expression...) let's be clear about what it is.  It was a referendum against Obama's far left socialist type agenda.  Americans across the country made that clear in their Tea Party protests, their town hall meetings, and their various marches on Washington. 
Yet here is vanden Heuvel:

This was an unearned win for the Republican Party. The election was fundamentally about one thing—the rotten economy—and Democrats paid the price as voters expressed their discontent. Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong.

She's missing the fact that, in truth, America is a center-right nation.  The far left agenda of this administration is simply overreach.   There was no shift - she's right about that.  Just a return to the norm.

No, according to vanden Heuvel, the opposite is true:  the Democrats lost because they weren't liberal enough:

The quickly congealing conventional wisdom is that President Obama tried to do too much and was too liberal. The opposite is true: Voters were alienated because they didn't believe his team had fought aggressively enough for the interests of working- and middle-class citizens. 

A frightening thought, to be sure. She says the Stimulus was inadequate.  It should have been more and it's the darn Republicans fault that it wasn't. To vanden Heuvel and other Democrats I've heard since Tuesday, it's still all about the economy.  This is a message they'd do well to rethink unless they want to lose control of the Senate as well; Americans are indeed concerned about jobs and the economy.  That's what we wanted Obama to focus on rather than a massive health care takeover and government power grab.

And I'm not sure which Obama she's been listening to when she claims the president "remains committed to a politics of 'civility and common ground'."  I don't think he ever looked for much common ground ("I won!")  and I haven't seen any civility lately.  I recall him calling me an "enemy" just last week and telling me to "sit in the back" of the bus he's trying to drive over the cliff.

No, vanden Heuvel demands he fight for government that benefits the "majority of Americans" but the majority spoke Tuesday night, and they're tired of his helping them.  He's NOT helping them.  Obama's policies are about to further cripple the economy, job growth and raise taxes come January.

I don't need that kind of help and clearly that's what Americans were rejecting Tuesday.

Added:  Oh wait...in answer to my own question, I see there IS someone more clueless, or at least as clueless.   Looks like Paul Krugman and vanden Heuvel got the same talking points this week:

Mr. Obama’s problem wasn’t lack of focus; it was lack of audacity. At the start of his administration he settled for an economic plan that was far too weak. 

Not liberal enough.

I'm not always the brightest color in the box, so someone might ought to explain this one to me:

And when Mr. Obama took office, America had just suffered its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. What the nation needed, given this grim prospect, was a really ambitious recovery plan. Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan? He might not have been able to get a big plan through Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary political tactics

With a Democratic majority at the time, why couldn't he have gotten it through Congress?  He showed no aversion to "extraordinary political tactics" when it came to ramming ObamaCare down our throats.

Krugman and vanden Heuvel's advice to Obama to dig in and "take a stand" is likely what he will do, and that's fine, too.  2012 is just around the corner.

Maureen Dowd's Irrational Rationality

Is Maureen Dowd attacking Christine O'Donnell in her latest column or Barack Obama?  It's hard to tell.  Both?  Probably.  She begins with one thesis and ends with another and I completely miss the rationale that ties them together.  Did she write two columns and a poltergeist in her computer blended them?  I don't know.  She tries to tie it together but it just doesn't work.

She begins clearly enough mocking Christine O'Donnell and her "Palin Mini-Me" look, (because that's what matters so much about politicians, right?  Their looks?) then picks up the witchcraft and Tolkein threads that have moved through the blogs this week. 

This is the line where Dowd attempts to ties her two threads together...

She’s also smart to think of politics in terms of passion and myth — two elements Barack Obama was able to summon during his campaign that are sorely missing from his presidency.

 ...because now she's mentioned Barack Obama and now she can spend the rest of her column about him without another word on O'Donnell (which isn't necessarily a bad thing.)

The last third of  Dowd's column deals with Obama's lack of passion and empathy.  She spends two thirds of her column mocking O'Donnell's passion yet then bemoans Obama's lack of it.  Which way do you want to go, Maureen?

This is actually the closing line which Dowd seems to believe ties it together:

The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.

Is she calling O'Donnell "insane" or just people with passion?

If this is best high dollar talent the New York Times can offer, there's hope for us all when it comes to making the big bucks.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Thoughts on Swollen Dogs and Queen Michelle's Spanish Holiday

I have to work today.  We have Open House at the school and I have to be there this afternoon.  Meh.  Then back to the daily grind tomorrow;  where did my summer go?

Yesterday I had a mental ticker over my head all day as I ticked off one chore after the other.  I got both dogs to the vet for their yearly shots and new supply of heartworm pills.  I got my car washed and vacuumed.  Got the license plate light repaired on the Teenager's car.  Went to visit my mother at The Glen.  Sat in 100 degree heat while she smoked four cigarettes.  Went to the grocery store (forgot half my list...) then came home and made shrimp primavera for dinner (wild caught Gulf shrimp!).

Meanwhile, I noticed that Checkers, the Boston Terrier, either had an allergic reaction to her shots (never happened before, though...) or got stung in the backyard, or poisoned by a frog.  Her whole little face was swollen like nobody's business and her muzzle was red, red, red.  She acted fine and was breathing fine, but I called the Emergency Vet (mine was closed) and they told me to monitor her breathing and to give her half a Benedryl.  She stayed swollen all evening but by midnight it had started going down some.  However, then her fur started looking lumpy and weird and her belly was all red; maybe the poison was working its way out of her.

This morning she still acts fine, is much less swollen, and her coat looks back to normal.  I gave her another half a Benedryl to work on the remaining swelling in her face and she seems fine.  I'll never know what happened but it was scary.  The other dog, the Lab, keeps coming up to check on her while she's sleeping.

Otherwise in the world, the story that keeps catching my eye is still the Michelle Obama vacation; not sure why I keep going back to that when there are other political happenings going on, but the hypocrisy of it just galls me.  I was reading this account, picked up from Drudge, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which tries to clarify some of the misinformation.

For example:

Other officials, asking not to be named because the first family considers it a private matter, said some reports of the trip have been exaggerated. Mrs. Obama is not traveling with 40 friends, one official said, but with two friends and four of their daughters, as well as a couple of aides and a couple of advance staff members.

Okay.  Six friends.  So why 60 rooms?  Or 50?  Is that misinformation, too?  I understand we have to have security and secret service, but 50 rooms?  Can't they double up?!

Robert Gibbs wouldn't comment other than to say  "She is a private citizen and is the mother of a daughter on a private trip. And I think I'd leave it at that."  The article quotes Anita McBride who points out that as a "public person," the First Lady draws scrutiny.  It's a matter of semantics that Gibbs is playing, isn't it?  She's a private citizen, but a public person, and this trip, at least a large portion of it, is funded by the taxpayer.

Professor Jacobson points out that this trip is "the latest in a line of seemingly imperial indifferences to optics in these difficult economic times."  And Allahpundit says,

As for the taxpayer expense for security, transportation, etc, (a) those same expenses would be incurred to some (lesser) extent during a U.S. vacation and (b) given the aortic hemorrhaging that is our national debt, what’s a little vacation paper cut here and there?

Yes, indeed, those midterms are right up the road and the optics of this trip, and the one to follow later in the month, will be fresh in the minds of the voters.  I guess maybe the Obama supporters don't begrudge their king and his queen a lavish lifestyle on the taxpayer dime, but I clearly remember every time George Bush went to Crawford, Texas, they came unglued.  Laura Bush vacationed solo, too, as the Post-Gazette points out, but she mostly went to national parks.

Oh well.  As for me, I'm just looking forward to another trip to Natchitoches sometime this year.  Or maybe we'll run up the road and check out El Dorado, Arkansas.  Steve will have to be elected president before I can afford any lavish five star hotels in Spain and cordoned off beaches.

C'est la vie.

Backdoor Amnesty

I saw David Vitter on Fox this morning discussing the leaked memo on immigration; he was outraged as many of us ought to be.

W. James Antle, III has an article at American Spectator explaining the contents of the memo.  Basically it's a backdoor amnesty plan; it gives United States Citizen and Immigration Services options on how to circumvent the legal process of immigration:

One proposal contained in the memo was that the USCIS grant "parole in place," which comes with a work permit and the right to apply for a green card, to various illegal immigrants. Another suggestion was to give "deferred action," delaying deportation indefinitely and preserving eligibility to apply for a work permit, to illegal aliens who would have benefited from the DREAM Act. 

It should surprise no one that this administration believes this is even an option for them.  This is the administration that has expanded governmental authority to new heights. 

As Charles Krauthammer pointed out:

It is just a bad idea and bad politics. It’s lawless. These are people who are appointed people in the administration deciding because Congress hasn’t enacted a law it wants enacted, it will do it by creating or finding loopholes in existing law.  It is like the administration, which was not able to get approval by Congress for cap-and-trade or carbon tax, and having the EPA do it by itself. That’s not the way the Constitution says our government runs. The laws are done by Congress. The administration is supposed to administer.

The will of the American people be damned!  Obama knows more than you do and he's smarter than you, and he knows what's best for you!  He won! 

Since we haven't seen his college transcripts, we don't know if Obama studied any basic civics classes, but I'm guessing not. 

You can read the memo here.  (PDF - 11 pgs.)

Why would the administration even be looking at such options?  Can these illegals also gain voting rights by decree of the USCIS?  It should strike fear in the hearts of every American that this administration is even looking at ways to circumvent the constitution for purposes of amnesty, that this administration is waging war with Arizona over immigration, that this administration is acting like we're under a dictatorship.  What the leader wants, we'll find a way to get.   What will be next, after amnesty?  What Constitutional laws will we banish by decree?

Again, Congress makes the laws.  Not Obama.

We are a nation of laws.  Or at least, we used to be.

Michelle Visits the Oil Spill

Is it just me or is this outfit supposed to look like someone spilled oil all over it?

(Photo credit:  Reuters)

Obama's Medicare Czar: It's Worse than You Thought

(Thanks Michelle Malkin for the link! )

(See also:  Dr. Death Panel Gets a Recess Appointment)

Here is Obama's pick for Medicare czar, Dr. Donald Berwick, explaining how the ideal medical system should act.  He is speaking to a British audience in 2008 about how wonderful their national health care system is.  He applauds them for choosing their system over a "simpler, less ambitious, less troubled plan than the NHS; you could have had the American plan.  You could have been spending 17% of your GDP to make health care unaffordable as a human right instead of spending 9% and guaranteeing it as a human right."

Yes, Berwick loves the NHS.  In fact, he criticizes "the darkness of private enterprise instead of accepting that a politically accountable system must act in the harsh and admittedly sometimes very unfair daylight of the press, public debate and political campaigning."

Berwick says you should use "your tax base to provide a single route of finance" instead of a "monstrous insurance industry of claims and rules and paper pushing."

He says the NHS recognizes that "sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker."

And the kicker:

Berwick says that "any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.  Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."

Hear it for yourself:



The buzz is building against this guy.

Red State had a detailed article about him yesterday.

Here are my earlier posts on Berwick here and here and here.

American Spectator also has some informative posts on Berwick by Robert Goldberg and Philip Klein. 

Mark Levin is all over this guy and I'm sure Glenn Beck must be too, although I don't watch him.

Naturally The New York Times does not report any of his controversial opinions; in fact, they conclude:

Dr. Berwick could help shield the White House from Republican charges that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to the rationing of care or even a government takeover.

Their piece on his selection is here.

Berwick must be confirmed by the Senate.  Start making your phone calls now!

Keeping Up With Those Wacky Obamas

Set the DVR! Michelle Obama is all set for her big premier on Sesame Street. In November, Michelle will travel to Sesame Street to educate the muppets on the benefits of growing your own vegetables, which she assures everyone, will be healthy and will taste great! No word if the Sesame Street garden has high levels of lead and had been fertilized with sludge.

And if you can't get enough of that First Couple, you can own the very seats they occupied in the Belasco Theater on their infamous New York Date Night last May! Yes, it's true! Seats K101 and K102 can be yours! Opening bids start at $500 and all proceeds go to a theater based charity group. You know, word is that after the Obamas attended the play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, that ticket sales for the production doubled!

Meanwhile, the Obamas are using local school children as junior lobbyists for the 2016 Olympics, and are still refusing to answer questions about the funding and staffing for the official White House Olympics Office. Not to worry though, kiddos! On Thursday, the Obamas will jet off to Copenhagen to use their considerable persuasive charm on the IOC in hopes that the Olympics will soon come to The Windy City! Of course, not all Chicagoans are hoping for an Obama success story in that regard; there is the Chicagoans For Rio group who are, you guessed it, pulling for Rio!

And, never idle, those wacky Obamas went on a sightseeing tour Sunday evening with First Grandmother in tow as well as Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president's half-sister, her
husband, Konrad Ng, and their daughters Suhaila and Savita. They visited the Jefferson Memorial, where he stayed for ten minutes, and then the Washington Monument, where the group spent about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia.....

(Photo credit: New York Times: Richard Termine)

Morticia Meets the Pope

Yes, I know. It's ugly.















But Laura dressed that way too.

Now THIS is Transparency!

Michelle loves her plastic belt.

I've said before, I have no fashion sense whatsoever and don't pretend to, so imagine my surprise to learn what a fashion coup this belt is. One fashionista says "This belt makes such a powerful statement about empowerment but also speaks volumes about the empathy she has for the downtrodden." I didn't know a belt could be so important!

It kind of reminds me of those jellies shoes everyone was wearing in the 80s - they sort of looked like french fry baskets from the Dairy Queen.

Consider this, though. Another commenter says that maybe this belt is what Obama meant by transparency. There might be something there.