“Opportunity Is Who We Are”

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Frank Bruni: Obama’s Magic Three

First President Obama recognized Mary Barra, who was in the audience, noting that her childhood wasn’t a gilded one—she wasn’t born into corporate royalty. No, she got there by dint of toil and talent, a factory worker’s daughter rising to become the first female chief executive officer of General Motors. She’s the American dream personified. Then Obama recognized John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, as “the son of a barkeep.” He, too, landed far from where he began. He, too, took the kind of journey that we like to believe is uniquely possible in this country, the fabled land of opportunity.

But it was also a lens through which the rest of the speech could be heard, and it was the lens through which all of us should be evaluating the policies and direction of our country right now. In paying tribute to Barra, Boehner and Barack Obama, the president was paying tribute to social mobility, and he was correctly defining the chance to better oneself—to travel from the circumstances of one’s birth to the circumstances of one’s merit and labor—as this country’s central and sustaining promise. It’s essential to our national identity. It’s vital to our sense of honor and purpose. It’s the foundation of an optimism that seems to be fading fast. If we let “the American dream” become a storybook phrase, a quaint and saccharine anachronism, no longer broadly evident and no longer widely believed, then we’re in desperate trouble.

Over the next year and the ones after that, we as a country somehow need to make sure that decades from now, a president delivering his or her State of the Union can survey the spectators and see someone like Barra; can glance back and see someone like Boehner; and can look in the mirror and see someone like the man who bridged Kenya, Kansas and the White House.

More here

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ah, bon soir carla! (video added)

President Obama is welcomed to a dinner by President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy at the G8 summit in Deauville

thursday

Update: The AFP article below would appear to be wrong, it looks like Michelle Obama isn’t going to France after all!

April 2009

Thursday: The President will travel from London to Deauville, France for the G-8 meetings … will hold a bilateral meeting with President Medvedev of Russia …. participates in the G-8 working lunch and working sessions … will also hold a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Kan of Japan.

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AFP: France’s First Lady Carla Bruni will host a packed agenda for the wives of the developed world’s most powerful leaders Thursday, in her first G8 summit since her pregnancy was revealed.

…She will appear along with other first ladies, including the US president’s wife Michelle Obama and Britain’s Samantha Cameron, using the summit to promote her latest cause: the battle against adult illiteracy.

After lunch on the first day of the summit on Thursday, 43-year-old Bruni will take her guests to visit food producers from the Normandy region before hosting a working session dubbed “together against illiteracy.”

In the evening, Bruni and her husband President Nicolas Sarkozy will play host to the other leaders and their spouses for a dinner on the seafront terrace of Le Ciro’s restaurant in the elegant Channel seaside resort.

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The First Lady will return to Washington after the French leg of the Obamas’ visit to Europe

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Friday: The President will hold a bilateral meeting with President Sarkozy of France …. will then participate in the G-8 working sessions …. Later, the President will travel from France to Warsaw, Poland. In the evening, the President and President Komorowski of Poland will host a dinner for the heads of state of Central and Eastern Europe.

Saturday: The President will hold a bilateral meeting with President Komorowski of Poland … the President and Prime Minister Tusk of Poland will hold a working lunch …. the President and Prime Minister Tusk will hold a joint press conference …. the President will depart for Washington, DC.

special gifts. hundreds of them.

President Obama waves goodbye from the steps of Air Force One as he departs Saudi Arabia on his way to Egypt, June, 2009

AP: ..Foreign leaders showered President Obama and his family with hundreds of thousands of dollars in art, jewelry, rare books and other presents during their first year in the White House.

Saudi Arabia’s king was the most generous gift-giver, according to documents released by the State Department on Tuesday. Saudi King Abdullah gave Obama, his wife and daughters nearly $190,000 in luxury baubles in 2009, including the single most valuable gift reported to have been given to U.S. officials that year: a ruby and diamond jewelry set, including earrings, a ring, a bracelet and necklace, for the first lady worth $132,000.

…By law, most gifts to U.S. officials must be turned over to the government and the jewelry has already been sent to the National Archives.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was a distant runner up to King Abdullah, with gifts for the first family worth a little under $33,000. The Italian haul included silk ties, a gold watch, a crystal table and candlesticks…….the Saudi monarch also presented Michelle Obama with a $14,200 pearl necklace. He gave the president a marble clock adorned with miniature gold palm trees and camels valued at $34,500. He sent first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama diamond earrings and necklaces worth more than $7,000.

Chinese President Hu Jintao gave Obama a $20,000 silk embroidery of the first family….French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife sent perfume and a $4,500 black Christian Dior handbag …Some leaders chose more modest gifts. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth presented Obama with framed portraits of herself and her husband, Prince Philip, worth $775….Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered the U.S. leader $521 in gifts, including the least expensive item listed by the State Department: a $75 bottle of olive oil.

Full article here

The only gift in that list that I’d have liked is the olive oil 😐

ooh la la

Callie Shell / Aurora for TIME