Happy 13th Birthday to First Daughter Natasha " Sasha" Obama!

Happy 13th Birthday to Sasha Obama!













 

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The First Family Arrives in South Africa

Hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Family in Senegal- More Images

hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Family visited Goree Island while in Senegal.



U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and his daughter Malia (L) arrive at Goree Island, a former slave trader's port, June 27, 2013 in Dakar. Obama's trip, his second to the continent as president, will take him to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.

REUTERS/Gary Cameron







U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama receive a bouquet as they arrive on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

---REUTERS/Jason Reed



US President Barack Obama (L) and First Lady Michelle Obama look out from the Door of No Return while touring the House of Slaves, or Maison des Esclaves, at Goree Island off the coast of Dakar on June 27, 2013. Obama and his family toured the museum at the site where African slaves were held before going through the door and being shipped off the continent as slaves.

---AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB



U.S. President Barack Obama greets well-wishers during his visit to Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

--REUTERS/Jason Reed



The wonderful zizi wrote some words about the people of Senegal.

A Note About the People of Senegal

Teranga means “Welcome” in Wolof, the predominant language. And the people living on this Westernmost bulge of the African continent truly are some of the most hospitable people you’ll ever know. Climactically, however, Senegal is the Western Hemisphere’s house of horrors, as many of our hurricanes are birthed off Senegal’s coast when hot dry Sahara and Sahel winds meet southerly cold North Atlantic winds plus moisture from the warm Atlantic Ocean currents, The ITCZ clash zone known as The Doldrums , to form the building blocks of storms

. Yet nothing takes one’s breath away more than standing on the craggy Senegalese coast in the evening and seeing the copper-gold sunset over the rambunctious Atlantic ocean. No wonder Senegal’s world famous poet and first post-colonial President, Leopold Senghor, called this land his “Childhood Kingdom” whose heartbeat is the Tam Tam (talking drum).

Senghor’s eyes, though were mesmerized by the beauty of Senegalese women. His famously erotic poem, Black Woman, published in his 1948 Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache , became a historical landmark for placing the African woman on a pedestal as a worthy model of beauty, thus challenging the centuries-old denigration of black women as antithesis of ideal white femininity.

“Naked woman, black woman

Dressed in your color that is life, in your form that is beauty!

I grew up in your shadow. The softness of your hands

Shielded my eyes, and now at the height of Summer and Noon,

From the crest of a charred hilltop I discover you, Promised Land

And your beauty strikes my heart like an eagle’s lightning flash.

[…snip]

Naked woman, dark woman

Oil no breeze can ripple, oil soothing the thighs

Of athletes and the thighs of the princes of Mali

Gazelle with celestial limbs, pearls are stars

Upon the night of your skin. delight of the mind’s riddles,

The reflections of red gold from your shimmering skin

In the shade of your hair, my despair

Lightens in the close suns of your eyes.”

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with African drummers on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.

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The First Family Lands in Africa: First Stop- Senegal

hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Family is visiting Africa- first stop, Senegal.

TO CLUELESS MEDIA: PRES. OBAMA’S IN AFRICA ‘CUZ IT HAS TOP TEN FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN WORLD

by @zizii2

“THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007.”

Nothing demonstrates the vapidity of the corporate media than the rancid ignorance they display when they are gung-ho to score cheap shots at President Obama on important matters, rather than do basic research!!!

And so it is that on undertaking a long overdue working visit to three countries on the continent of Africa, the corporate media including FOXNews universe display once again the national embarrassment that they have become. But for the fact that they’d bleat about threats to their “First Amendment Rights”, I’d rather Pres Obama left them behind to indulge in muffin stories and similar shiny objects they chase best. Foreign media ALWAYS outshine ours anyway, so their absence would actually improve the media pool at these foreign pressers. And the public would be better informed for it.

So cynical journos like David Nakamura of @WAPO , and colleagues at AtlanticWire @NYT , Moonie News, @ABC, @NBC, @MSNBC, @CBS, @CNN, @FOX, @YahooNews, here are 12 FACTS to get into their heads before they utter any more inanities about the President’s trip to Africa, and carping endlessly about “costs of trip” versus sequestered White House tours. Without the 80% of Coltan produced from the Congo belt running your iPhone/iPad or other tablet LED screens, they’d be pecking away at an old typewriter (well, assuming even the steel in the machine’s housing isn’t from African iron ore).

We are talking about Africa in the 21st Century, not some Henry Stanley 19th century racist travelogue you read about “natives doing quaint tribal dances”, or as the late Literary maestro Chinua Achebe snarkily penned at the end of his seminal novel Things Fall Apart, the colonizer’s version of history in which the indigenous African only warrants a passing line about his own history. No we are talking about a forward moving continent, warts and all that brooks no nonsense from anybody, superpower or not!

******

To be honest President Obama’s travel to the continent of Africa is at best being perceived as a face-saving effort, as many on the continent are not impressed with the scant attention he has paid to African countries. The most favorable observation is that at least he has left the continent alone to chart its own course without the undue meddling of Cold War America or condescending administrations that followed the collapse of the battle between superpowers.

While there is some loud grumbling about the fact that America’s obsession with the “War on Terror” and recent variations in the Maghreb (Libya, Algeria, Tunisia), Sahel (Mali) occludes every other subject during bilateral and multilateral talks

If many of you remember, President Obama promised to engage actively with the continent’s innovative thinkers during the seminal White House Townhall with Young African Leaders.

Read the rest of this informative piece at the link above.  

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The First Family is now in Germany

hat tip-The Obama Diary

The First Family continues their travels...onto Germany.

[caption id="attachment_46030" align="alignnone" width="393"] Arriving in Berlin[/caption]





 

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The First Family is in Ireland

hat tip-The Obama Diary:

The First Daughters are out of school...so, they're traveling with the parents....yeah...

[caption id="attachment_45964" align="alignnone" width="545"] President Obama, the First Lady and their daughters Sasha and Malia are greeted by Joan Christie, the Queen’s official representative in Northern Ireland, upon their arrival at Belfast International Airport[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_45965" align="alignnone" width="540"] President Obama and his wife Michelle, pictured with First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness[/caption]



It never gets old...watching the First Family come out of Air Force One.





[caption id="attachment_45971" align="alignnone" width="545"] Belfast airport[/caption]



   

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First Lady Michelle Obama and First Daughters Receive the WH Christmas Tree

The First Lady and First Daughters received what will be the WH Christmas Tree this year. The First Daughters are growing into beautiful young ladies.


The First Lady Receives the 2011 White House Christmas Tree






U.S. first lady Michelle Obama waves as she walks out with daughters Sasha and Malia (R) to receive the 2011 White House Christmas Tree at the White House in Washington, November 25, 2011.
---- REUTERS/Yuri Gripas





US First Lady Michelle Obama (L), daughters Sasha (C) and Malia arrive to receive the White House Christmas tree at the White House in Washington on November 25, 2011.
---NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

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Snow Day

c/o Ari Melber

The WeeMichelles Are Going to Sidwell Friends

Obamarama: The Obamas Pick a School -- It's Sidwell Friends


President-Elect and Michelle Obama have chosen Sidwell Friends for their daughters, Malia and Sasha. They will have to go to two different campus settings, because the lower school is separate from the middle school & high school campus.

Sidwell's lower school is in Bethesda, Md., and that is where Sasha would be attending second grade. Malia is in fifth grade, and that is part of the middle school at Sidwell. The middle school is located on the same campus as the high school in Northwest Washington, a few miles from the lower school.

Sidwell has between 1,000 and 1,100 students and says that 39 percent of its students are of color. Tuition this year for elementary is is $28,442, and for the middle school, $29,442.

Well, Sidwell is already familiar with how to deal with having children of the First Family at their school. Plus, it was reported that the girls were more comfortable there because they knew that some of the Biden grandchildren attend Sidwell.