Pete Souza: “Family dinner is usually private time. But I heard they were having dinner atop their hotel in Moscow, which overlooked the Kremlin. When they first sat down, Sasha was just having some fun with her dad.” July 7, 2009
President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the White House Summit on Working Families at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. President Obama, as part of efforts to make the U.S. workplace more accommodating for employees with families, will on Monday direct federal agencies to step up efforts to give workers more leeway in determining their schedules.
President Barack Obama sits with, from left, Mark Weinberger, Ernst & Young, Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson and Johnson, Shelia Marcello, CEO of Care.com, Debra Lee, Chairman and CEO of BET Networks, and Dave Lissy from Bright Horizons during their meeting at the White House Summit on Working Families
President Barack Obama is encouraging Congress and the country to focus on issues here at home — namely how to improve the livelihoods of working families.Here are the five things we learned from our sitdown with the President: 1. The goal of the summit is … “… to lift up the conversation that everybody is already having individually and let people know you’re not alone out here,” Obama said. Priority one: Paid family leave According to a survey from the United Nations’ labor agency, of the 185 countries and territories with readily available information, only three do not provide paid maternity leave. And, you guessed it, the United States made that list. The other two countries are Oman and Papua New Guinea. “Paid family leave, we’re the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t have it,” the President said. “It doesn’t make any sense. There are a lot of countries that are a lot poorer than we are that also have it.”
"I take this personally because I’m the husband of a brilliant woman who struggled to balance work and raising our girls." —President Obama
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) June 23, 2014
Priority two: Workplace flexibility The President said he’s pushing for workplace flexibility to give parents the opportunity to become more involved in their children’s lives and education. “We always say that we want parents involved in our kids’ education,” he said. “There are millions of families out there who can’t even imagine taking time off to go to a parent-teacher conference.” This type of workplace flexibility is a practice that he and the first lady believe will improve employee morale and motivation. Priority three: Child care. “We don’t do a very good job providing high-quality, affordable child care, and there are a lot of countries, a lot of our competitors do it,” Obama told Bolduan. “That means that it’s a lot easier for women to be in the workforce and not have to make choices that ultimately mean they’re, in some cases, getting paid less or having less opportunities. And it also means, by the way, that our kids are more likely to thrive.” Add to that list: Equal pay for equal work.
President Barack Obama mimics someone handing him a baby
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President Barack Obama walks down Calvert Street NW to have lunch at a Chipotle Mexican Grill in Washington, before they attended the White House Summit on Working Families. Walking with President Obama, from second from left are, Shirley Young, Shelby Ramirez, Lisa Rumain, and Rodger Trombley
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President Barack Obama with Shelby Ramirez
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Robin Roberts and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House Summit on Working Families
On This Day: President Obama and Vice President Biden talk with Zachary Atala, son of Dr. Anthony Atala, M.D., Director, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House, June 5, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (All Times US Eastern)
3:25 AM: The President arrives at the European Council for the 2014 G-7 Summit, Brussels
3:40 AM: Participates in a G-7 meeting on the global economy
6:0 AM: Takes part in a working lunch with G-7 leaders on development
8:30 AM: Participates in a bilateral meeting with PM David Cameron of the United Kingdom
9:50 AM: Holds a joint press conference with PM Cameron
11:05 AM: Departs Brussels, Belgium
11:55 AM: Arrives Paris, France
1:05 PM: Joins President François Hollande for a dinner
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Barack Black Eagle: ‘One Who Helps People Throughout The Land’
Six years ago, I made my first trip to Indian country. I visited the Crow Nation in Montana—an experience I’ll never forget. I left with a new Crow name, an adoptive Crow family, and an even stronger commitment to build a future that honors old traditions and welcomes every Native American into the American Dream. Next week, I’ll return to Indian country, when Michelle and I visit the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in Cannonball, North Dakota. We’re eager to visit this reservation, which holds a special place in American history as the home of Chief Sitting Bull. And while we’re there, I’ll announce the next steps my Administration will take to support jobs, education, and self-determination in Indian country. As president, I’ve worked closely with tribal leaders, and I’ve benefited greatly from their knowledge and guidance. That’s why I created the White House Council on Native American Affairs—to make sure that kind of partnership is happening across the federal government. And every year, I host the White House Tribal Nations Conference, where leaders from every federally recognized tribe are invited to meet with members of my Administration. Today, honoring the nation-to-nation relationship with Indian country isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. And we have a lot to show for it.
President Barack Obama with his adoptive parents, Hartford and Mary Black Eagle
Together, we’ve strengthened justice and tribal sovereignty. We reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, giving tribes the power to prosecute people who commit domestic violence in Indian country, whether they’re Native American or not. I signed the Tribal Law and Order Act, which strengthened the power of tribal courts to hand down appropriate criminal sentences. And I signed changes to the Stafford Act to let tribes directly request disaster assistance, because when disasters strike, you shouldn’t have to wait for a middleman to get the help you need. Together, we’ve resolved longstanding disputes. We settled a discrimination suit by Native American farmers and ranchers, and we’ve taken steps to make sure that all federal farm loan programs are fair to Native Americans from now on. And I signed into law the Claims Resolution Act, which included the historic Cobell settlement, making right years of neglect by the Department of the Interior and leading to the establishment of the Land Buy-Back Program to consolidate Indian lands and restore them to tribal trust lands.
Together, we’ve increased Native Americans’ access to quality, affordable health care. One of the reasons I fought so hard to pass the Affordable Care Act is that it permanently reauthorized the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which provides care to many in tribal communities. And under the Affordable Care Act, Native Americans across the country now have access to comprehensive, affordable coverage, some for the first time. Together, we’ve worked to expand opportunity. My Administration has built roads and high-speed internet to connect tribal communities to the broader economy. We’ve made major investments in job training and tribal colleges and universities. We’ve tripled oil and gas revenues on tribal lands, creating jobs and helping the United States become more energy independent. And we’re working with tribes to get more renewable energy projects up and running, so tribal lands can be a source of renewable energy and the good local jobs that come with it. We can be proud of the progress we’ve made together. But we need to do more
Maya Rhodan: Obama Administration Sees Undocumented Children Immigrants As Humanitarian Issue
The Obama Administration announced a shift Monday in its approach to children who enter the U.S. illegally and without adult guardians, forming a new interagency group that will address the influx as a humanitarian crisis. Administration officials said Monday that there has been a 90% increase in the number of undocumented immigrants under 18 entering the U.S., with more young girls and children under 13 entering the country than ever before. Because of this the administration wants to ensure that kids are quickly transferred from border control facilities to facilities operated by the Department of Health and Human Services that can better address their housing, educational, and medical needs.
Officials said about 1,000 undocumented children are being housed at a facility on the Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, where Baptist Children’s Family Services has been contracted to look after them. Another facility will be opening soon in Ventura County, Calif., and is expected to be able to house about 600 children. The kids typically stay in the facilities for between 30 and 45 days. The Obama Administration also requested an additional $1.4 billion to provide relief for unaccompanied immigrant children. Due to the increase in kids illegally crossing the border alone—expected to reach as high 60,000 this year—the government expects it will cost $2.28 billion to fund the programs that aid unaccompanied minors, the Associated Press reports. The bulk of children crossing the border have fled violence and economic hardship in Central American countries including Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras
Jeffrey Young: How Obamacare Tries To Makes Us Healthier, One Community At A Time
President Barack Obama’s health care reform law will spend more than $1 trillion over the next decade to extend health coverage to millions of people — and about $20 billion actually trying to make us healthier. The money supporting these initiatives is tucked inside the Affordable Care Act in the form of the Prevention and Public Health Fund, a pot of money to finance efforts in hundreds of communities to curtail obesity, promote exercise and better nutrition, and reduce tobacco use. Improving the health of Americans and reducing preventable deaths wouldn’t just benefit those individuals. Better health could prove key to reversing decades of skyrocketing health care spending. And the prevention fund is Obamacare’s primary means of making inroads on these problems, one community at a time.
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) May 30, 2014
Up to 40 percent of deaths each year from the five leading causes in America — heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke and unintentional injuries — are preventable, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May. In San Diego County, California, the local government and the Chula Vista Elementary School District used federal grants to make an immediate impact on students’ weight, said Nick Macchione, the director of the county Health and Human Services Agency. Using some of the $8.2 million the county received from the prevention fund, the health agency and the school started making changes, Macchione said. The cafeteria started offering healthier food and local farmers visited to talk about agriculture and provide fresh produce. Math teachers incorporated physical activity into counting lessons. And students and parents received information about nutrition and exercise.
Two years later, Chula Vista schools already could boast gains: a 3.2 percent reduction in the share of students who were obese or overweight. The county has since started spreading this program to 300 schools serving 650,000 children, Macchione said. Programs in Indiana also focused on children brought home the challenges faced by those working to address health in their communities, said Andrea Hays, the project director overseeing the $3 million in Community Transformation Grants managed by the Healthy Communities Partnership of Southwest Indiana in Evansville.
Yahoo: US Construction Spending Up 0.2 Percent In April
U.S. construction spending posted modest gains in April, driven by an uptick in home building and government construction that lifted total activity to the highest level in five years. Construction spending rose 0.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $953.5 billion, the strongest performance since March 2009, the Commerce Department said Monday. The April increase was lower than economists had expected. But the government revised March activity higher to a 0.6 percent gain, up from an initial estimate of a 0.2 percent increase. The small April improvement, combined with the strong gain in March, suggest that the construction industry is recovering from the harsh winter and will provide a boost to growth in the months ahead.
“This was mostly a good report,” IHS Global Insight economists Stephanie Karol and Patrick Newport said in an analyst note. “Core construction, the piece of the report which affects GDP, advanced 0.6 percent, the largest gain since December.” The April figure marked the third straight increase after the weather pushed spending down 0.4 percent in January. Total construction spending is 8.6 percent higher than a year ago, led by a 17.2 percent increase in housing construction. Non-residential construction is up by 5.6 percent from a year ago, while government projects are just 1.2 percent higher.
Greg Sargent: On Bowe Bergdahl, White House Bets On GOP overreach
The signs are everywhere this morning that the skirmishing over the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap is set to escalate into a protracted political battle that could go on for weeks or months. And the White House is placing its bet on Da Crazy. That is to say, White House officials are bracing for months of assaults on Obama’s handling of the swap, but they believe the Conservative Entertainment Complex will veer into over the top attacks that will alienate the broader public, which won’t see the basics of the situation in such lurid terms.
How this plays out could center on a video of Bergdahl in captivity taken by the Taliban in December. It was shown to Senators last night, to persuade them officials were right to worry that his deteriorating health meant fast action — without a 30-day notification of Congress — was imperative. A senior administration official tells me the White House is reviewing the possibility of releasing the video to the public. Obama aides say they’re not worried about the prospect of weeks of segments on Fox News or hearings by a Republican House that has spent four years investigating and rebuffing the White House on issues like Solyndra and Fast and Furious.
A morning treat for the ladies and some gentlemen.
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Aleksander Chan: Some Guy Filmed President Obama Working Out In A Polish Gym
For whatever reason, video of President Obama apparently working out in the gym of the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw, Poland has leaked. He’s in the country to reaffirm U.S. support for central and eastern European countries against Russia. Photos and video were first posted by Jean Ekwa on his Facebook page, which depict Obama, clad in a dark blue track suit, headphones in, lifting weights, doing lunges, and using the elliptical. At one point, he pauses to yawn.
The Secret Service confirmed to The Hill that the video is real, and that other hotel guests taking photos and videos of his workout is not a problem: “Hotel guests were not asked to leave the gym during this off the record movement, nor were they asked to refrain from taking pictures,” agency spokesman Ed Donovan said. The Hill also notes that these “off the record” excursions usually involve impromptu photo-ops with voters/citizens of countries he is visiting
— US Embassy Brussels (@usembbrussels) June 5, 2014
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On This Day
Ninety-five-year-old Charles Edwards shakes hands with Sen. Obama after presenting him with a hand-made walking stick during a town hall meeting at Virginia High School June 5, 2008 in Bristol, Virginia
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President Obama poses for photos before departing from Ramstein Airbase in Germany, June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama visits with Wounded Warriors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany of June 5, 2009. (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama attends an expanded bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at Dresden Castle, June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and White House staffers aboard Air Force One to Paris look at Reggie Love’s photos of Egypt on June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama signs a guestbook before touring Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama, with Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bertrand Herz, places a rose on a memorial plaque during a visit to the former Buchenwald concentration camp June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama places a flower in the crematorium at Buchenwald concentration camp, June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama stops to shake hands with military families outside Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany on June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama gets ready to be interviewed by news reporter Tom Brokaw at Zwinger Palace in Dresden, Germany, June 5, 2009 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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President Obama talks with Vice President Biden in the Oval Office, June 5, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama shake hands with guests during an event for political appointees on the South Lawn of the White House, June 5, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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First Lady Michelle Obama talks with students from William R. Harper High School in Chicago, Ill., in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, June 5, 2013 (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
President Obama talks with, from left: Samantha Power, former Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in the Oval Office, June 5, 2013 (Photo by Pete Souza)
Students from William R. Harper High School in Chicago, Ill., listen as President Obama talks with them about the Emancipation Proclamation hanging in the Oval Office, June 5, 2013 (Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama with his National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, June 5, 2013
Julie Miller: George Clooney Interrupts Engagement To Eviscerate Las Vegas Hotel Mogul
Wynn decided to make an appearance on Bloomberg to dredge up the old argument and further diss the groom-to-be. “George didn’t call me an asshole,” Wynn said. “He was a little into the tequila, but he is fun to be with. He’s a good storyteller. . . .George Clooney is fun to be with. . You just have to watch your timing.” Presumably having had enough with Wynn’s condescension and self-serving cable interviews, Clooney has issued a new statement in which he eviscerates the hotel tycoon’s argument piece by piece.
Steve Wynn and I have met three times, two times for dinner. That is the extent of our knowledge of one another, so I will refrain from trying to categorize him based on the little time we’ve spent together, but I will not let his version of the truth go unchallenged. He now says he didn’t call the president an ‘a——.’ That is false. He bellowed ‘I voted for the a——,’ and then called him the same thing several more times as the dinner came to an abrupt end. Again there were eight people at the table, eight witnesses. I did in turn, call him the same body part, and walked out. Again he can make up whatever story he wants, but these are the facts. He said I drank 16 shots of tequila. I didn’t drink one shot of tequila, not one. We were drinking but it was early and we still had two events to attend.
He said I live in a bubble. More of a bubble than Las Vegas? Honestly? He says I’m ‘molly coddled,’ that I’m surrounded by people who coddle me. I would suggest that Mr. Wynn look to his left and right and find anyone in his sphere that says anything but ‘yes’ to him. Emphatically. I did not attend a private boys’ school, I worked in tobacco fields and in stock rooms, and construction sites. I’ve been broke more of my life than I have been successful, and I understand the meaning of being an employee and how difficult it is to make ends meet. Steve is one of the richest men in the world and he should be congratulated for it, but he needs to take off his red sparkly dinner jacket and roll up his sleeves every once in a while and understand what most of the country is actually dealing with … or at least start with the fact that you can’t make up stories when eight people who are not on your payroll are sitting around you as witnesses.
What happens in Vegas . . . doesn’t stay in Vegas when you are George Clooney and get in an argument with a hotel tycoon over President Obama. “There were 9 people at that table. . .So you can ask them. . .Steve likes to go on rants. . .HE called the president an asshole. . . that is a fact. . .I said the President was my longtime friend and then he said ‘your friend is an asshole.’ . . .At that point I told Steve that HE was an asshole and I wasn’t going to sit at his table while he was being such a jackass. And I walked out. There were obviously quite a few more adjectives and adverbs used by both of us. Those are all the facts. It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with character.”
To read more of what led to this epic and well deserved BURN, head to Vanity Fair
The Obama Diary 
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