Remembering Madelyn Dunham.
January 23, 2009 at 6:50 pm | Posted in Historical, Obama! | Leave a commentTags: family, Madelyn Dunham, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama!, video
This is a video that was done for the presidential election campaign and features President Obama’s sister Maya Soetoro-Ng talking about the strong influence their mother has had on their values and outlook.
This is a longer video that President Obama presented at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
The President Meets The Press.
January 23, 2009 at 6:31 pm | Posted in Obama!, WH Press Briefings | Leave a commentTags: Obama!, video, white house press
Yesterday President Obama ventured down into the White House press rooms.
Suggestions that the President was “irritated” are an overblown description of him reminding the White House reporters that he was simply there to see their quarters and say hello, not answer questions.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin was completely out of line in asking the question and further compounded his discourtesy by attempting to press it.
In my opinion, President Obama displayed his usual poise. Judge for yourself.
“I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
January 23, 2009 at 6:06 pm | Posted in Historical, Miscellany | Leave a commentTags: Albio Siries, Anthony Weiner, Emma Lazarus, interior department, ken salazar, Liberty Island, new york, Obama!, poem, Robert Menendez, Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus
"Boston ; N.Y. : Forbes Co., c1883 (i.e., c1884)"
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
(BETA/New York) Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went to the top of the crown with fellow democrats New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Rep. Albio Siries and New York Rep. Anthony Weiner.
He said a study is underway on whether to open the crown to the public and that the review should be complete in April.
Opening the crown “is very important to me,” said Salazar, but he added that any such plan must include the safety of the public.
Menendez suggested there may be some sort of lottery to allow limited numbers of tourists access to the crown on a daily basis.
After Sept. 11, access to the crown was closed as a security measure, along with the rest of the Statue and Liberty Island.
When the island and base of the statue were reopened several years later, the crown remained closed. U.S. Park officials said the narrow spiral stairway first built for worker access was a danger for anyone suffering an injury or other medical event, such as a heart attack.
In addition, a 1999 internal study found that if there were a fire in the pedestal, the interior of the statue would act like a chimney, with smoke suffocating anyone on the stairs.
(Excelsior, the New York state motto, is Latin for “ever upward.”)
Let’s Not Interrupt “Dancing With The Stars.”
January 23, 2009 at 5:12 pm | Posted in WH Press Briefings | Leave a commentTags: 1929, dancing with the stars, mary eaton, Obama!, Robert Gibbs, state of the union, zeigfeld follies
Today White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs did another press briefing.
Mary Eaton, Ziegfeld dancing star.
(HuffPo) “I think it is likely that he will speak to Congress, a joint session in Congress, sometime in February. I don’t believe that we have got a date nailed down. I know there is interest from your bosses whether it will coincide with Dancing With The Stars … and I don’t mean Congress,” he said. “It is something we are doing, I just don’t know the time frame.”
Heaven help us that the work of government should interfere with Americans watching “Dancing With The Stars”!
Enjoy the follies.
What’s That You’re Eating?
January 23, 2009 at 2:17 pm | Posted in Food & Drug Administration | Leave a commentTags: 1906, Dr. Steven Nissen, FDA, food safety, Harvey W. Wiley, health/safety, pure food law, Theodore Roosevelt
Lester P. W. Wehle, a live-poultry inspector for the city of New York, inspects the crop of a chicken, 1951. (World Telegram & Sun photo by Al Ravenna)
(Newsday.com) “The truth be told, the FDA is a failed agency … the main problem is that it is terribly underfunded,” [Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic] said. “It needs to do more inspections, especially of foods brought in internationally. We are all very vulnerable. This has to be fixed and fixed quickly.”
One hundred and two years ago — on June 30, 1906 — President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Food and Drugs Act. The Pure Food Law was an important part of that legislation.
h/t Crooks & Liars
Harvey W. Wiley, MD (Photo: FDA History Office)
Harvey W. Wiley came to be the leader of the “pure food crusade.” A chemist and physician, State chemist of Indiana and professor at Purdue University, Wiley went to Washington in 1883 as chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture. He made the study of food adulteration his bureau’s principal business, at first merely outraged by what he deemed essentially harmless fraud. In time, sensing real threats to health, Wiley could express himself in writing, conversation, and oratory with vividness, clarity, homely wit, and moral passion. He toured the country making speeches, every rostrum a pulpit for the gospel of pure food.
How much melamine is in your cookies?
“They can have their 35-hour cake and eat 25% bonus time too.”
January 23, 2009 at 12:29 pm | Posted in Economy, Foreign Affairs | Leave a commentTags: 35-hour week, France, unions, work
Alsace-Lorraine Street, Toulouse, France (some time between 1890 and 1900)
(Yahoo/Time) Few of the expected changes to the 35-hour week have materialized since France’s Conservative government passed a measure in July [2008] designed to make it easier for bosses to force their employees to work more.
* * *
“And by allowing companies to calculate employee time worked on a yearly rather than strict weekly basis as the previous law required, the 35-hour law provides businesses with badly needed flexibility to adapt to evolving activity at lower cost.”
* * *
More crucially, perhaps, the 35-hour week’s survival owes a lot to other measures the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy has passed as part of its mantra of “work more to earn more.” Key to that is a provision introduced in late 2007 that makes overtime more profitable to both companies and employers by waving taxes and social charges. The ironic result: bosses and workers now find they can have their 35-hour cake and eat 25% bonus time too. “Rather than increasing the set week to 37, 39, or 40 hours – and have to raise fixed salaries proportionally – it’s more logical to stay at 35 hours, and go beyond or below it with affordable extra-time as demand surges or decreases,” says Zenevre, who is also head of the Lorraine regional section of France’s General Confederation of Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses, the nation’s largest employer category. “This flexibility is particularly valuable with the recession setting in and really disrupting demand.”
Obama Gets Mail.
January 23, 2009 at 11:08 am | Posted in Miscellany | Leave a commentTags: mail, Obama!, white house
Garden of the White House and corner of the White House, 1921 (Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer)
Items sent to the White House are often significantly delayed and can be irreparably harmed during the security screening process. Therefore, please do not send items of personal importance, such as family photographs, because items may not be returned.
For security reasons, please do not send consumable gifts — such as food, flowers, and other perishable items — to the White House. While President Obama, the First Lady, Vice President Biden, and Dr. Biden appreciate your thoughtfulness, they request that instead you look to your local community for opportunities to assist your neighbors in need.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
First Lady Grace Coolidge.
January 23, 2009 at 10:09 am | Posted in First Family | Leave a commentTags: 1924, calvin coolidge, first lady, grace coolidge
Grace Coolidge with two dogs, holding the front paws of one, July 26, 1924.
They lived modestly; they moved into half of a duplex two weeks before their first son was born, and she budgeted expenses well within the income of a struggling small-town lawyer.
To Grace Coolidge may be credited a full share in her husband’s rise in politics. She worked hard, kept up appearances, took her part in town activities, attended her church, and offset his shyness with a gay friendliness. She bore a second son in 1908, and it was she who played backyard baseball with the boys. As Coolidge was rising to the rank of governor, the family kept the duplex; he rented a dollar-and-a-half room in Boston and came home on weekends.
In 1921, as wife of the Vice President, Grace Coolidge went from her housewife’s routine into Washington society and quickly became the most popular woman in the capital. Her zest for life and her innate simplicity charmed even the most critical. Stylish clothes–a frugal husband’s one indulgence–set off her good looks.
After Harding’s death, she planned the new administration’s social life as her husband wanted it: unpretentious but dignified. Her time and her friendliness now belonged to the nation, and she was generous with both. As she wrote later, she was “I, and yet, not I–this was the wife of the President of the United States and she took precedence over me….” Under the sorrow of her younger son’s sudden death at 16, she never let grief interfere with her duties as First Lady. Tact and gaiety made her one of the most popular hostesses of the White House, and she left Washington in 1929 with the country’s respect and love.
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