Justin's Political Corner

Fox Nation attacked Michelle Obama by asking if she is turning the Easter Egg Roll into a “fat camp” by adding physical activities and healthy meals to the agenda. In fact, first ladies commonly incorporate their policy initiatives into the annual event.

Other first ladies have used the Easter egg roll to highlight their policy initiatives. During the 2002 Easter Egg Roll, Laura Bush read to children to highlight her campaign on literacy, a tradition that Michelle Obama has continued.

Fox News has regularly attacked Michelle Obama for her “Let’s Move” campaign.

H/T: MMFA

This week, Breitbart News broke a long-standing security protocol and published a story detailing the precise location where President Obama’s daughters are vacationing this week. On Wednesday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) used the report to attack the First Daughters for taking a vacation.

King’s comments came during an appearance on Mickelson in the Morning, an Iowa-based radio show. A caller, Carla, brought up sequestration and proceeded to criticize the Michelle Obama and her daughters for taking a vacation in the Bahamas. King agreed — “Carla, you’re on point and on the mark all the way through” — before criticizing them for also taking a vacation last year in Mexico. “That was at our expense, too,” King bemoaned.

CALLER: When I see the First Lady and the beautiful girls going off to the Bahamas waving goodbye to us, it’s really hard to stomach. When we’re tightening our belts, either all of us should do it or none of us should do it. This, I am pretty tolerant, I always have been, I usually shut my mouth. This is not acceptable.

KING: Carla, you’re on point and on the mark all the way through. […] You’re right on the president. He needs to show some austerity himself. Instead he wanted to tell America how bad it was going to be. […] We’ve got the president doing these things. He sent the daughters to spring break in Mexico a year ago. That was at our expense, too. And now to the Bahamas at one of the most expensive places there. That is the wrong image to be coming out of the White House.

Listen to it:

This notion that the Obamas are living a life of excess is beginning to take hold among conservative members of Congress.

H/T: Think Progress

Today in Poutrage Alert: Obama-hating shit for brains loon Dana Loesch deliberately lied about Laura Bush’s role in the 2002 Oscars in order to attack First Lady Michelle Obama for her appearance at last night’s Oscars ceremony. Obama presented the award for Best Picture Award, and Argo won.


More proof that Loesch is a condescending jerk:

Sorry, Dana, but former FLOTUS Laura Bush was a presenter at the 2002 Oscars.

Twitter user @PumpsandBumps tells the truth about Bush’s role in the 2002 Oscars:

Will someone remind these @dloesch that Laura Bush was a presenter at the 74th Academy Awards? #thanks

— Miss Hill (@PumpsandBumps) February 25, 2013

Media Matters For America has the real no-spin facts about the Oscars, which conservatives like her decided to ignore intentionally:

Right-wing media are falsely suggesting that First Lady Michelle Obama’s Academy Awards appearance is unprecedented, ignoring that former presidents and former First Lady Laura Bush have previously participated in the ceremony.
In fact, former presidents and former First Lady Laura Bush have participated in Academy Awards ceremonies. In 2002, Bush appeared at the Oscars in a taped appearance. From the Chicago Tribune:

The documentary history montage was put together by director Penelope Spheeris, whose remarkable “Decline of Western Civilization” rock documentaries likely have never been even close to nominated.
And the show’s marvelous “What do the movies mean to you?” opening segment was done by director Errol Morris, whose groundbreaking work, from “Thin Blue Line” through “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” has also been criminally neglected.
It was bracing to see people from Laura Bush to Jerry Brown to Mikhail Gorbachev interviewed, and mind-bending to hear film titles such as Russ Meyer’s “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill” and William Castle’s “The Tingler” mentioned on usually sacrosanct Oscar airspace.

In 1981, President Reagan taped an appearance for the Oscars. From The New York Times:

But now that Mr. Reagan has moved on to another profession, he’s been invited to appear on the Academy Awards program on March 30.
The President will remain in the White House and tape a brief greeting to the audience at the Oscar ceremonies, and his words will be televised early in the awards show.
”President Reagan was once a member of our industry and it seemed fitting for him to join us,” said Norman Jewison, producer of this year’s show.

The Times also noted that former President Franklin D. Roosevelt “spoke to an Oscar audience by radio in 1941.”

The far right-wing loves to lie and smear any member of the Obama family (or any Democrat/liberal/alleged “RINO”).

(cross-posted from DanaBusted.blogspot.com)

Making good on his threat promise that he’s not going away, ex-Congressman Joe Walsh reared his head Friday morning to blast the first lady for traveling to her hometown of Chicago to attend slain 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton’s funeral.

In a series of tweets first reported by DNAinfo Chicago, Walsh ripped Michelle Obama’s attendance at the funeral of the teenaged inaugural performer as “political.”

Walsh said via Twitter Friday:

News of Pendleton’s Jan. 29 shooting death struck a chord nationwide, prompting outrage over the honor student’s senseless slaying, gun control and the epidemic of shooting violence in Chicago.

After the King College Prep student was shot by a still at-large perp while standing under a park canopy to escape the rain, a petition was started urging President Obama to attend the teen’s funeral.

Walsh’s criticism of the first lady attending the Pendleton service is not the first time the Tea Party favorite has lashed out on the topic of Chicago violence following a headline-grabbing tragedy. Last spring, after the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin inspired Walsh’s then-congressional colleague Bobby Rush to don a hoodie on the House floor, Walsh said he hoped Rush would “be as outraged with all of the black on black crime going on in the city of Chicago weekend after weekend” as he was with Martin’s death.

H/T: Huffington Post

The next four years for Sasha and Malia Obama will likely be marked by many teenage milestones, including dates, proms and college. But the Obama girls have former first daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush and Chelsea Clinton, before them to look up to for guidance.

When Sasha and Malia entered the White House in 2009, they were 7 and 11. Now, at 11 and 14, their lives are set to change as they enter their later teenage years during their father’s second term.

Chelsea Clinton was 12 when her father, Bill Clinton, became the 42nd president. Her first four years as first daughter were very similar to the Obamas’. Clinton rarely gave interviews and glimpses into her childhood in the White House by the public were few.

After a “Saturday Night Live” skit mocked Clinton, then 12, for her awkward appearance, her parents and their aides declined to respond to inquiries into Clinton’s young life.

With Sasha and Malia still at a young age, they have remained relatively off limits to the public as well except for public appearances with their parents.

“It’s a tough issue,” Bob Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University told ABCNews.com. “There is a sense that if a president has young children, those children didn’t sign on to be president. Even though he is the ultimate in public figures, the kids are in a difficult territory.”

Before public events, Obama tells his girls, “Just look like you’re listening to me,” while their mother, Michelle Obama, reminds them to smile, she told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel , adding that they don’t have a “poker face.”

But as Chelsea Clinton entered her father’s second term, she was 16, just two years older than Malia is now. Clinton made more public appearances including a 12 day trip to South Asia with her mother, during which Clinton made her first public statement to the media.

As the Obama girls get older during their father’s second term, they may become more involved in his public life as well. The girls have already started making public appearances with their mother, including a six-day trip to South Africa and Botswana last year, during which they met Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“If you’re the child of somebody who is the president of the United States, you’re going to have opportunities and have doors open to you that you otherwise would never have,” Thompson said.

Malia will be 18 at the end of her father’s second term. She will likely be filling out college applications just like Clinton, who chose Stanford University while her parents were in the White House. Clinton arrived at the university in a motorcade with her parents—and the Secret Service, who dressed as students and lived in her dorm throughout her four years.

“If Malia Obama sends her resume to some place or applies to college, people are going to pay attention in a way that they wouldn’t with anyone else,” Thompson said.

The Obama girls, like other first children before them, may also have to explore young love in the public eye. During Clinton’s life as the president’s daughter, her relationships with fellow Stanford student Matthew Pierce and White House intern Jeremy Kane, were watched closely by the media.

“I have men with guns that surround them [Sasha and Malia] — often,” Obama, laughing, told “Good Morning America’s” Robin Roberts earlier this year. “And a great incentive for running for re-election is that it means they never get in the car with a boy who had a beer. And that’s a pretty good thing!”

“I think they are…the first kids in the White House growing up where everybody’s got a cellphone and everybody’s watching,” the first lady told iVillage last month. “You may be having a moment, but somebody could use that moment and try to define you forever.”

When Chelsea Clinton entered the White House, she was an awkward tween with big, curly hair and the style of a young teen. But as she matured during her father’s second term, Clinton showed off a sleeker hairdo and a fashionable sense of a style.

h/t: GMA.Yahoo.com