Obama Goes Philosophical in Thailand

President Obama is travelling in Asia this week, with stops in Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and Cambodia.

He's been there almost 24 hours now and hasn't insulted or offended anyone, unlike Mitt Romney on his last world tour. /snark

CNN Political Ticker

"I always believe in prayer. I believe in prayer when I go to church back home," Obama said at a press conference in Bangkok. "if a Buddhist monk is wishing me well, I’m going to take whatever good vibes he can give me to try to deal with some challenges back home."

At a stop earlier in the day, Obama jokingly told a monk, "We're working on this budget; we're going to need a lot of prayer for that."

At Sunday's press conference with Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Obama also expressed confidence about a fiscal deal, drawing on the democracy theme.

"Democracy's a little messier than alternative systems of government, but that's because democracy allows everybody to have a voice," Obama said. "That system of government lasts, and it's legitimate. And when agreements are finally struck, you know that nobody's being left out of the conversation - and that's the reason for our stability and prosperity."

Cute Pic ~ McKayla Maroney and President Obama Are Not Impressed

The Gold-Medal winning Olympic Gymnastics Team was at the White House the other day and McKayla Maroney posed with President Obama in a look-alike picture.

Via NBC News

Even McKayla Maroney was impressed.

A photo of the Olympic gold medalist gymnast and President Barack Obama doing her now-famous "McKayla Maroney is not impressed" face went viral Saturday after the White House posted it on Twitter. The two took the picture Thursday when Maroney and her Fierce Five teammates visited the White House.

"He was the one who brought it up," Maroney told The Associated Press. "We were about to leave and he said, `I want to talk to you one second about the face.' He said, `I pretty much do that face at least once a day."'

Maroney was photographed making the half scowl with her nose scrunched up while she was on the medals podium after winning silver on vault at the London Olympics. It spawned dozens of "McKayla Maroney is not impressed" memes - including one showing a photoshopped Maroney in the White House Situation Room on the night Osama Bin Laden was killed.

The "face" has become Maroney's trademark. But it's one thing for fans to ask her about it, quite another when the president does.

"I, like, freaked out," Maroney said. "He said, `Let's do it together.' We took a picture and now it's everywhere."

The President Tours NYC Hurricane Damage

The President visited Sandy-stricken Staten Island today in NYC. Obama would have been there sooner, except Mayor Bloomberg told him to stay away so his security wouldn't be a distraction right after the hurricane.

WSJ Transcript of the President's Remarks

And during difficult times like this, we’re reminded that we’re bound together and we have to look out for each other. And a lot of the things that seem important, the petty differences melt away, and we focus on what binds us together and that we as Americans are going to stand with each other in their hour of need.

Now, more specifically, we are now still in the process of recovery. As you can see, as you travel around parts of Staten Island, as we flew over parts of — other parts of the city and the region that had been impacted, there is still a lot of cleanup to do. People still need emergency help. They still need heat. They still need power. They still need food. They still need shelter. Kids are still trying to figure out where they’re going to school. So there’s a lot of short-term, immediate stuff that has to be dealt with. And we are going to make sure that we stay here as long as people need that immediate help. That’s FEMA’s primary task. And we’ll be coordinating closely with state and local governments to make sure folks are getting the short-term help.

But what we’ve also already heard is that there’s going to be some long-term rebuilding that’s required. You look at this block and you know that this is a community that is deeply rooted. Most of the folks that I met here have been here 20, 30, 50 years. They don’t want to see their community uprooted, but there’s got to be a plan for rebuilding, and that plan is going to have to be coordinated, and they’re going to need resources.



So what I’ve committed to doing is to work with the outstanding congressional delegation led by your Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, also working with Governor Christie and the Jersey delegation to try to come up with a game plan for how we’re going to be able to resource the rebuilding process.

And I’m confident, as Governor Cuomo said, that we’re going to be able to do it. But it’s going to require everybody focused on getting the job done. We’re going to have to put some of the turf battles aside. We’re going to have to make sure that everybody is focused on doing the job as opposed to worrying about who is getting the credit or who is getting the contracts or all that stuff that sometimes goes into the rebuilding process.

On the federal level, because this is going to be such a big job, I wanted to assign one particular person who would be in charge from our perspective, who would be our point person — because FEMA basically runs the recovery process, it doesn’t focus on the rebuilding. For that, we’ve got to have all government agencies involved. Janet Napolitano has done a great job with respect to DHS, but we thought it would be good to have a New Yorker who is going to be the point person. And so our outstanding HUD Secretary, Shaun Donovan, who used to be the head of the New York Housing Authority — so he knows a little bit about New York and building — is going to be our point person. And he’s going to be working with the mayor, the governor, the borough presidents, the county officials to make sure that we come up with a strong, effective plan. And then, I’ll be working with the members of Congress to do everything we can to get the resources needed to rebuild. And I have every confidence that Shaun is going to be doing a great job, and so people should feel some confidence about that.

Let me just close by saying this: I had the opportunity to give some hugs and communicate thoughts and prayers to the Moore family. They lost two young sons during the course of this tragedy. And obviously, I expressed to them — as a father, as a parent — my heartbreak over what they went through. And they’re still obviously a little shell-shocked.

No Patience for Wingnut Witch Hunt on Benghazi

Seriously, I'm losing patience with this witch hunt to blame Susan Rice for not instantly knowing everything about Benghazi, Libya. It's just crazy wingnut posturing in light of Obama's popular re-election, and they just need to stop the madness. It didn't work for Romney and it's going to backfire on them. We Dems heard enough of this crap during the election, which is now over, and they need to back off.

The first vid is audio only of John McCain being asked by a CNN reporter about why he missed a briefing on Benghazi to spend more time bashing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and the Senator has the angry reaction "Who the hell are you to ask me that?" Maybe he realizes he is embroiled in a witch hunt out of control which he started.

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