Dear Gawd! What the fuck is she wearing now? What the fuck is that? Please. Make it stop.

 WEST TISBURY, Mass. (AP) — The wind, rain and gloom that have curtailed most outdoor activities for the past three days have done little to keep President Barack Obama from enjoying his Martha’s Vineyard vacation.

While he’s been able to sneak in two rounds of golf, he told reporters Tuesday he’s “doing a lot of reading” at the farm compound he’s rented for the first family. “I’m having a great time,” he said.

The president made the remarks, his first in public since heading out on vacation last week, as he escorted first lady Michelle Obama from the State Road restaurant.

The couple dined out for the second consecutive night, this time with Washington power broker Vernon Jordan and his wife, Ann, as well as Chicago friends Eric and Cheryl Whitaker. White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also joined the group.

Fellow diners cheered the president and clapped as he left the restaurant. Obama paused for pictures and signed autographs. While Mrs. Obama wore a colorful print dress with contrasting sleeves, he looked more subdued in khakis, a striped dress shirt and blue outdoor jacket.

A strong thunderstorms have lashed the island off Massachusetts since Sunday, causing power outages, curtailing air transportation and forcing ferry cancellations. It’s also triggered traffic jams and long lines at movie theaters, restaurants and other indoor venues.

The Obamas are scheduled to remain on vacation until Sunday, when the president heads to New Orleans to check on the gulf oil spill cleanup and to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Last Friday, Obama kicked off his vacation with what has proved to be a prescient decision: He stopped at a Vineyard Haven bookstore and picked up three books for himself: “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, “Tinkers” by Paul Harding and “A Few Corrections” by Brad Leithauser.

By Judi McLeod  

While President Barack Obama was “forcefully” endorsing the Ground Zero Mosque, Michelle Obama was paying homage with her presence to the Great Mosque at Granada,  which overlooks what was once Islam’s most important outpost in Europe, the Alhambra palace in Granada.

There is no doubt about the influence of the Great Mosque of Granada overlooking Alhambra.  One Spanish guidebook states that the Alhambra is to Granada what St.Peter’s is to Rome or St. Mark’s Square to Venice.

Michelle Obama and her nine-year-old daughter, Sasha, visited the Alhambra Mosque at dusk on the second day of her visit to Spain, one day after Barack had celebrated his 49th birthday without his family with Chicago friends.

Built in 2003, the Great Mosque in Granada, like the mosque planned in the shadow of Ground Zero, was born in controversy.

“The land on which the mosque has been built was bought 22 years ago, but city authorities continually objected to the planning proposals.” (Victory News Magazine, July 17,  2003).  “When it was finally accepted that the land could be used for religious purposes, objections were raised to the layout of the building.  Planners had to rethink the height and design of the building’s minaret but opposition to the scheme, which received financial backing from Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, gradually subsided.”

Back in 2004, the mayor, a member of Spain’s ruling right-wing party, attended the inauguration. 

“The King of Spain was also offered an invitation but “prior engagements” meant he was unable to accept,” wrote Victory News Magazine.

On inauguration day, a muezzin called Spanish Muslims to prayer at the first mosque to be opened in Granada since the 1492 reconquista, the culmination of a 22-year project.

“For those who built the Great Mosque of Granada, which looks out onto the Alhambra Palace, its inauguration, attended by a string of Muslim and non-Muslim dignitaries, heralds a new dawn for the faith in Europe.”

“The mosque is a symbol of a return to Islam among the Spanish people and among indigenous Europeans that will break with the malicious concept of Islam as a foreign and immigrant religion in Europe,” says Abdel Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for the mosque and convert to Islam.

“It will act as a vocal point for the Islamic revival in Europe.”

The call to prayer of the muezzin can now be heard in the narrow streets and alleyways of Albaicin, the city’s old Moorish district, as a new generation of Spanish converts which is growing in numbers and confidence gives the city back a small part of its ancient Islamic heart.

“When we stand in the garden and look out at the Alhambra, we tell people what they see is not something built by Arabs but by the people of Granada—by their own forebears, who were Muslims and spoke Arabic,” said Malik Ruiz, a local engineer who is the president of the mosque and president of the Islamic Community in Spain.

While the builders of the Mosque near Ground Zero claim it is being built to foster interfaith sentiments with other religions, its detractors insist it is a victory mosque built to commemorate the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

The money to build the Ground Zero Mosque is said to be coming from Muslim countries.

Other than referring to it in passing,  there has been no media coverage about Michelle Obama’s dusk visit to the Great Mosque at Granada.  Prayer times at the mosque on Aug. 5 were 6:09 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

While Michelle Obama was roundly criticized as a spendthrift American Marie Antoinette during her visit to Spain, was she on official Mosque business for her husband?

Were messages exchanged between Michelle Obama and the principals of the Great Mosque at Granada on August 5, 2010?

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) — Michelle Obama will join former first lady Laura Bush in ceremonies marking the ninth anniversary of the United Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mrs. Bush had previously confirmed her participation, saying we “must never forget the brave sacrifice of these extraordinary men and women.”

Passengers aboard the flight are believed to have struggled with its hijackers before the jet crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa., killing all aboard.

Mrs. Obama’s press office confirmed her role as the first lady vacationed with her family on Martha’s Vineyard.

“Their show of support honors the lives and memories of these 40 heroes and everyone we lost on September 11th,” said Neil Mulholland, head of the National Park Foundation. The group is helping build a memorial at the Shanksville site.

President Barack Obama continues to be criticized by families of those killed at ground zero on Sept. 11 for saying Muslims have a right to exercise their religious freedom, including at a planned mosque two blocks from the site.

United Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when hijackers seized control. Forty passengers and crew were killed in the crash.

Construction on a permanent memorial to the victims is under way. Its first phase is expected to be dedicated in time for next year’s 10th anniversary of the crash.

The portrait looks a bit like a young Little Richard and Michael Jackson (when he still had a real nose) morphed into a Michelle Hussein Obama.

Story Here

Speaking of shit…

ABC Local

A street in south suburban Calumet Park Illinois has been renamed for the president of the United States.

Hundreds of people turned out Saturday morning as a one-mile stretch of 127th Street was renamed Obama Drive.

Following the unveiling, a parade marched down the newly named street.

The board of Calumet Park voted unanimously to renamed that stretch from Winchester to Carpenter.

Dems may use food stamp money to pay for Michelle Obama’s nutrition initiative

By Russell Berman–The Hill

Democrats who reluctantly slashed a food stamp program to fund a state aid bill may have to do so again to pay for a top priority of first lady Michelle Obama.

The House will soon consider an $8 billion child nutrition bill that’s at the center of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative. Before leaving for the summer recess, the Senate passed a smaller version of the legislation that is paid for by trimming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. Read More

WaPo

Reporters with offices in the Maryland State House Tuesday were escorted from the building and tourists turned away so that First Lady Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha can tour the historic Annapolis building in private.

Police also cleared 50 bystanders from a public square and then moved them even further away — to a roadway median more than 600 yards from the State House — in anticipation of the Obamas exit to their motorcade.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) rushed back to the state capital just before noon following morning campaign events in the Washington suburbs of Bethesda and Silver Spring. Aides said they had little notice before the impromptu visit.

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Police also cleared 50 bystanders from a public square and then moved them even further away — to a roadway median more than 600 yards from the State House — in anticipation of the Obamas exit to their motorcade.

Shoo, little people, shoo!

By Jeannie DeAngelis

Those of us who thought the “Michelle tours Marbella” saga ended after the First Lady dined on char-grilled turbot with the King and Queen of Spain and returned to Washington DC were mistaken.

Seems today the Obama spin team has taken prevarication to a new level.  I knew things were getting dicey when Michelle decided to skip the Starlite Gala hosted by Obama friend and frequent White House guest Eva Longoria, and Zorro, better known as Antonio Banderas. 

Supposedly, the star-studded event was coincidentally scheduled for the same weekend Michelle and her entourage visited the Villa Padierna.  Trust me, with the Obamas nothing happens by chance.

When Mrs. Obama surprisingly declined the invitation to Marbella’s toniest event, it was obvious Barry must have warned America’s jet-setting first wife to cool it because political blowback was splashing all over him and the Democratic Party.

Bloggers, cable news shows and every major news organization, including even CBS, questioned the Spanish trip’s timing.  Americans struggling to pay mortgages and feed families justifiably felt Michelle’s “ritzy vacation in Spain while the U.S. faces tough economic times was off-message — as was highlighting the beaches in Spain after urging Americans to head to Florida’s Gulf Coast to help out the tourism industry impacted by the BP oil spill.”

Americans are disgusted by Michelle flaunting excess in the face of struggling unemployed citizens who just last week were told the España excursion was a “private” mother-daughter trip.  Fed-up, people are not buying the newest heart-wrenching story that the five-day jaunt to Spain was a self-sacrificial outing made to comfort a mourning friend. As a result, damage control is officially in full swing.

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times wrote that Michelle Obama “made the trip because she promised one of her closest friends, a longtime Chicago pal who just lost her father, she would spend time with her.”  Are Americans supposed to believe that a quarter-million dollar plus, transatlantic taxpayer-funded trip took place in lieu of a belated condolence card and a floral arrangement?

The story being circulated is that Anita Blanchard, Michelle’s obstetrician, lost her father recently and supposedly, “Mrs. Obama was not able to make the funeral at the beginning of July.”

Does Michelle Obama rearrange the calendar only for vacations, but not for funerals?

Dr. Blanchard purportedly promised her daughter a trip to Spain for her birthday and invited Michelle and Sasha to tag along to spend post-funeral time together. So let’s see, Michelle left Barack with Oprah Winfrey on his birthday to travel with baby doc Blanchard to one of Europe’s poshest resorts.

How did the conversation unfold?  “Oh Anita, I’m so sorry about your dad’s untimely death. Let’s assuage the grief by spending some girlfriend time eating tapas and chatting inside a canvas beach hut beside the sunny Mediterranean Sea.”

Sorry, but Michelle strutting through Marbella in a one-sleeved black and white Jean Paul Gaultier top and oversized Chanel sunglasses doesn’t exactly convey the message of a woman consoling a bereaved friend.  Maybe it’s just that Middle America is unacquainted with the Chicago funerary tradition of flamenco dancing a month after burying a parent. 

The White House is also saying that Mrs. Obama did not travel with three-dozen close and intimate friends as reported in the press. So why were 60 rooms reserved in the Villa Padierna for an average of $2500 a night?

According to Mrs. Obama’s spokeswoman Catherine McCormick Lelyvel, the grief getaway included “six White House advance staffers and two East Wing staffers, Deputy Chief of Staff Melissa Winter and Mrs. Obama’s personal assistant, Kristen Jarvis.”

In addition to the 250 security personnel supplied by the Spaniards, Mrs. Obama employed “three shifts of uniformed and plainclothes agents and military personnel flew with her on a big Air Force 757.” 

In addition to attempting to clarify Michelle’s trip, Lynn Sweet asked the obvious question: “So why did Mrs. Obama go to Spain at this time? She’s not tone-deaf politically.”  Does the Washington Bureau Chief for Chicago Sun Times mean politically “tone-deaf” on the style of President Obama? 

In the article entitled, “Inside story of Michelle’s trip,” a probative Lynn Sweet inquired even further: “What was behind the ‘mother-daughter’ vacation?”  You mean besides perusing exclusive shops, strutting around town in strappy Maison Martin Margiela sandals, sunning on a balmy beach, dining in exquisite restaurants and paying homage to Spain’s “cultural tribute to Muslims” Alhambra Palace?

Presently, presidential Spin Meisters are submerged in a campaign to head off trip-to-Spain flack and are answering Sweet’s inquiries by saying Michelle “felt it was important as a dear friend” to do what? Travel to a five-star resort, barricade off large swathes of a public Marbella beach and flout the privileged perks of the elite in the face of struggling Americans?

Presidential apologist and shameless lackey, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked at a briefing if there was any concern about “the appearance” of Mrs. Obama’s Spain trip.

With a straight face, Gibbs actually made the following, very private statement: “The first lady is on a private trip. 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.”

Wrong! The day Michelle Obama launched the Let’s Move governmental task force and became America’s spokesperson/monitor for BMI and CEO of the fatty food patrol, the First Lady officially became a very public figure.

This week that same public figure expects America to swallow the story that $75,000 a day was spent on the Costa del Sol to console a bereaved friend, when overdue hugs and tears could have been shared in Washington DC at no cost to the American taxpayer.

Enlarge

Unbelievable. Read the absolute bullshit here.

I’m curious, where the hell is Anita Blanchard in any of the pictures with Michelle in Spain? Just askin’…

This is what Michelle and her daughter Sasquatch wore to meet the King and Queen of Spain. For fucks sake, even Jimmah Carters’s nasty wife and ugly kid dressed better.

Putting a bow on shit just makes it shit with a bow.