President Obama’s ice cream conspiracy

President Obama spent some time in Bar Harbor, Maine last weekend with his family.  Well apparently the Obamas choice of where to get some ice cream caused quite a stir amongst the right wing blogosphere. The name of the ice cream shop is Mount Desert Island Ice Cream. The logo outside the shop features a upright black fist clenching a spoon.

To some this logo resembles the black power symbol from the 1960’s.  Mount Desert is owned by a white woman named Linda Parker.  With a state that has a black population of 1%, I doubt that this white woman is trying to overthrow the white race and the state of Maine.

Blogosphere goes bananas over ‘black power’ sundaes

‘It’s just ice cream,’ says Mount Desert Island business owner

By Bill Trotter
BDN Staff

BAR HARBOR, Maine — Black Power Ice Cream?

Linda Parker never contemplated this name for her business, opting instead for the less provocative “Mount Desert Island Ice Cream” when she started making her cold confections in 2005.

The company boasts “fearless flavor” as its motto, but with varieties such as Mexican chocolate, blueberry basil and stout, her customers are more likely to encounter a Fig Newton at her business than they are Huey Newton.

Never mind that the former Black Panther leader died more than 20 years ago. The reason all this has come up is that Parker’s customers this past weekend included President Barack Obama and his family, who stopped in for some cones one afternoon during a whirlwind two-day family vacation on MDI. Photos of the impromptu visit were taken and posted online, where several bloggers noticed that the shop’s logo of an upright black fist clenching a spoon resembles the clenched black fist that was adopted as a black power symbol in the 1960s.

Even Linda Parker thought the outrage over President Obama’s visit was crazy.

Parker said she and her husband first saw the blog posts on Saturday, the day after Obama’s visit to her shop.  She said the notion that the president, who ordered coconut ice cream, used her small-town ice cream shop to demonstrate allegiance to the black power movement is absurd.

“It just seemed really hilarious to us,” Parker said. “All I’m doing is getting up, making ice cream, and going to bed. That’s all I do all summer. No time for radical insurgency.”

Read it all here.

President Obama ordered a coconut flavored ice cream.  Can you imagine the outrage if he had ordered black walnut or even chocolate?  Fox News, Andrew Breitbart, Rush and the rest of the right-wing lunatic fringe would be hyperventilating.

Valerie Jarrett: President Obama’s BFF

New York Times Magazine has an interesting article about Valerie Jarrett.  She’s President Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor to the President and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.

The Ultimate Obama Insider
By ROBERT DRAPER

On Jan. 25, 2008, the day before the South Carolina Democratic primary, Barack Obama endured a grueling succession of campaign events across the state. When his staff informed him that the evening would conclude with a brief show-up at the Pink Ice Ball, a gala for the African-American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Obama flatly refused to attend. “I’ve been to sorority events before,” he said. “We’re not gonna change anybody’s mind.”

Rick Wade, a senior adviser, Stacey Brayboy, the state campaign manager, and Anton Gunn, the state political director, took turns beseeching their boss. The gala, they told Obama, would be attended by more than 2,000 college-educated African-American women, a constituent group that was originally skeptical of the candidate’s “blackness” and that the campaign worked tirelessly to wrest from Hillary Clinton. State luminaries like Representative James Clyburn — himself an undeclared black voter — would be expecting him. They would be in and out in five minutes.

Obama’s irritation grew. “Man, it’s late, I’m tired,” he snapped. “I’m not going to any sorority event.”

The three staff members knew what their only option was at this point. “If you want him to do something,” Gunn would later tell me, “there are two people he’s not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.”

At the day’s penultimate event, a rally in Columbia, Gunn, Brayboy and Wade pleaded their case to Jarrett, the Obamas’ longtime friend and consigliere. When they were finished, Jarrett told them, “We can make that happen,” as Gunn would recall it. Jarrett informed Michelle of the situation, and when the candidate stepped offstage from the rally, Obama’s wife told him he had one last stop to make before they called it a night.

Check out the entire magazine article at the New York Times.

President Barack Obama and fatherhood

President Barack Obama graces the cover of today’s edition of Parade Magazine with his daughters Malia and Sasha.

President Obama talks about how much fatherhood is important to him when it comes to his two daughters and how many fathers need to step up to the plate and spend more time in their childrens lives.

‘We Need Fathers To Step Up’
by President Barack Obama

Two days before the inauguration, PARADE published a letter from Barack Obama to his daughters about what he hoped for them and all the children of America. The letter attracted international attention. On this Father’s Day, we asked the President to reflect on what fatherhood means to him.

[Get the story behind the story from PARADE Editor Janice Kaplan.]

As the father of two young girls who have shown such poise, humor, and patience in the unconventional life into which they have been thrust, I mark this Father’s Day—our first in the White House—with a deep sense of gratitude. One of the greatest benefits of being President is that I now live right above the office. I see my girls off to school nearly every morning and have dinner with them nearly every night. It is a welcome change after so many years out on the campaign trail and commuting between Chicago and Capitol Hill.

But I observe this Father’s Day not just as a father grateful to be present in my daughters’ lives but also as a son who grew up without a father in my own life. My father left my family when I was 2 years old, and I knew him mainly from the letters he wrote and the stories my family told. And while I was lucky to have two wonderful grandparents who poured everything they had into helping my mother raise my sister and me, I still felt the weight of his absence throughout my childhood.

As an adult, working as a community organizer and later as a legislator, I would often walk through the streets of Chicago’s South Side and see boys marked by that same absence—boys without supervision or direction or anyone to help them as they struggled to grow into men. I identified with their frustration and disengagement—with their sense of having been let down.

In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.

Read the entire article at Parade Magazine.com and check out the Obama family photo album.

Happy Father’s Day

Good morning and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, granddads and other father like folks out there.  Hope you all have a great day.

Father’s Day doesn’t receive all the hype and hoopla that Mother’s Day receives but fatherhood is still important in our society.  According to the History Channel the first known celebration of Father’s Day occurred on July 5, 1908.

The History of Father’s Day

The first known celebration of Father’s Day was on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, West Virginia, where it was commemorated at William Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South – now known as Central United Methodist Church. Grace Golden Clayton is believed to have suggested it to her pastor after a deadly explosion in nearby Monongah in December, killing 361 men.

It was also during a sermon in 1909 that Sonora Smart Dodd became inspired by Mother’s Day. After the death of her mother, Sonora and her siblings were raised by their father William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran. Sonora wanted to show how thankful she was to her father and, because William was born in June, she worked to have the first Father’s Day celebrated on June 19, 1910.

In 1924, President Coolidge recommended that Father’s Day become a national holiday. President Johnson designated the third Sunday of June to be Father’s Day in 1966. It was not until 1972 that President Nixon instituted Father’s Day as a national observance.

Did You Know – Roses are the official flower on Father’s Day, red for fathers who were still living and white for those who have passed on.

Check out The History Channel site for more information about Father’s Day and take a look at famous tv dads too.

On Friday President Barack Obama held a national day of conversation about fatherhood and personal responsibility.

Famous and not so famous fathers mentored youth throughout Washington, D.C. area on Friday at the request of President Obama.

First Father Knows Best: Famed Dads Mentor Youth

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer

The students of Ballou Senior High School’s automotive technology program can thank Barack Obama’s absent father for their current predicament: getting rapped at by Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC, who’s mixing rhyme and reason about being a good man and finding significance in one’s life. He and a dozen male students are sitting in the program’s auto shop in Southeast yesterday afternoon, sheltered from the first truly sunny day in recent memory.

“I didn’t come here to be a famous rap dude,” says McDaniels, standing in front of a hydraulic brake demonstrator across from three busted-up cars on hydraulic lifts. “I didn’t come here to be the king of rock. If [Run-DMC] didn’t do what we did, there would be no hip-hop.”

The students consider this theory.

McDaniels ponders his example more deeply, saying: “What I represent is purpose and destiny. . . . Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it. . . . I was like y’all, a school kid growing up in the ‘hood. . . . And I became not just a rapper but one of the greatest ever to do it. And the reason it happened was because I took every opportunity.”

Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher sits nearby, silently, in a beige suit and blue oxford shirt, next to the diagram of a multi-part fuel-injection trainer. His mustache won’t say whether he’s smiling.

The Super Bowl champion and one-third of the legendary hip-hop group were in the garage as part of President Obama’s national day of conversation about fatherhood and personal responsibility. Father’s Day is tomorrow, and Obama — whose father’s absence shaped his life and inspired a best-selling book — deployed famous and semi-famous men to eight sites in the Washington area to interact with nonprofit organizations that focus on youth mentorship. Obama visited one such group in Arlington yesterday morning before heading back to the White House for a town-hall meeting on fatherhood and a mentoring session with young men on the South Lawn.

You can read the entire Washington Post article here.

PETA, President Obama and the fly

PETA is at it again. President Barack Obama had an interview on CNBC at the White House on Tuesday. A fly was buzzing around the president, he swatted the pesky fly and killed it.  Well PETA was a little upset over the president’s fly killing skills.

PETA bugged by President Obama’s fly swatting

BY Michael Saul
DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

President Obama’s impressive fly-swatting prowess has left the nation’s insect-loving militants both bugged and buzzing.

“Swatting a fly on TV indicates that he’s not perfect,” Bruce Friedrich, vice president for policy at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told the Daily News Thursday.

Swatting a fly means the fly better get lost or the fly will get killed. I own a flyswatter and I will use it

“President Obama is not the Buddha. He is human like the rest of us,” Friedrich said. “But human beings often don’t think before we act, and, so people swat flies and far worse.”

We don’t think before we act? For a damn fly? Like I said, I own a flyswatter and I will use it.

During an interview with CNBC at the White House on Tuesday, a fly buzzed around the nation’s commander in chief.

“Hey, get out of here,” the president playfully ordered the insect. When the fly didn’t buzz off, Obama exhibited a talent not previously seen by the American public.` He patiently waited for the fly to settle.

He slowly raised his hand. His eyes cast downward, carefully tracking the fly’s movement. The look on his face suggested serious, deep concentration. And, then, he smacked the fly dead in a single try.

“Nice!” CNBC’s John Harwood exclaimed. “Now, where were we?” Obama asked Harwood.

When he realized onlookers were slightly awed by the quick kill, Obama said,

“That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

PETA praised the president and First Lady Michelle Obama for their record on animals, such as opposing factory farming and the Canadian seal hunt while in the Senate.

But the fly swatting was a definite mistake, albeit a small one, Friedrich argued.

PETA is sending Obama a bug catching device, which allows people to capture insects and set them free.

“It’s not a huge deal. One might even call it a non-story. But if the media wants to talk about fly-swatting, we’ll talk about compassion, even for flies.”

The White House is declining to comment.

No word yet on funeral arrangements.

Check out President Obama’s fly killing skills here at the New York Daily News.

If I see a fly buzzing around me, I will kill it.  And I dare PETA to do something about it.

But I love people with black skin

So says Diane Black, the Tennessee Republican state senator whose legislative aide Sherri Goforth sent out an email showing President Barack Obama looking like a spook.

You see, Sherri Goforth sent an email showing images of all the presidents of the United States.  According to the Los Angeles Times:

She did it by sending out an e-mail with images of all the presidents of the United States, with Barack Obama depicted below in the bottom right hand corner only as a pair of bright white eyes on a black background. Sort of like a ghost. But between just us, probably more like a spook. And for those not steeped in quaint Southern terminology for blacks, “spook” was once (an apparently still is) a popular slur.

The Los Angeles Times article also mentions the following:

Her boss, who reprimanded her, is emphasizing that she had nothing to do with it. The senator says she has always been a friend to “people with black skin.”

I feel much better now

According to the Nashville Scene Diane Black has done plenty for black folks:

“It absolutely does not reflect any of my beliefs,” she says of the email that her staffer sent on a state computer to a bunch of her Republican buddies. “This is, believe me, not at all anything having to do with being derogatory toward someone in a minority.”

In fact, Black says, she’s “reached out to people all over this world” as a nurse. As evidence of her racist-free heart, she cites her trips to Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. She went deep into the jungles of Guatemala like a great white bwana to help babies.

“I spent time in Haiti during the time of Aristide working with people with black skin who needed medical help,” she says. And if that’s not enough, her family once hosted a Brazilian exchange student in their home. Wow!

And what about Goforth? She said she sent the email to the wrong list of people.  So apparently there was right list of people to send the email to but she hit the wrong button.   Go figure.  Anyway after backtracking on that wrong list comment Ms. Goforth issued another apology:

“I want to offer my deepest apology regarding the offensive nature of the email forwarded to several of my colleagues. I also want to make it clear that it was forwarded to me from an acquaintance with absolutely no political party ties and who is outside the Tennessee Capitol Hill arena. I should have deleted it upon receipt. Again, I am deeply sorry and offer a sincere apology to anyone offended.”

Makes your head spin, don’t it?  I mean Rusty DePass basically calls First Lady Michelle Obama a gorilla and now this.  So who will be the next person to act a fool and show their true colors.

As Mary C. Curtis over at Politics Daily states:

Lindsey Graham, one of South Carolina’s U.S. senators, has said he is “deeply troubled” by comments about race made by Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

So Senator Graham, since statements that speak of the need for diversity on the bench upset you, I know you’ll be demanding a clear apology from DePass – a South Carolina colleague — for his comments comparing the First Lady of the United States to an animal.

Is Senator Graham deeply troubled by Rusty DePass’s gorilla comments?

Yes folks we are certainly living in a post racial society.

Sonia Sotomayor nominated to the Supreme Court

Earlier today President Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court.

She would replace Justice David Souter.  If confirmed fifty-four year old Judge Sotomayor would become the second woman on the court joining Ruth Bader Ginsburg and only the third woman to ever sit on the court.  Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female Justice of the Supreme Court.

Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court

By Michael Shear, Debbi Wilgoren and Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writers

President Obama this morning nominated U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, hailing her as “an inspiring woman” with a moving personal story and broad professional experience who would bring new perspective to the court.

If confirmed, Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and only the third woman ever to sit on the panel. She grew up in a Bronx housing project, went on to Princeton University and Yale Law School, and has stirred controversy by saying that judges’ legal findings are informed by their own life experiences as well as their legal research.

Judge Sotomayor, who’s of Puerto Rican descent, was born in the Bronx and grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx. She graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, earned her B.A.from Princeton University in 1976 where she graduated summa cum laude, and obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

You can read more about Judge Sotomayor in the New York Times article, Kid From the Bronx With Hopes and Doubts and the Washington Post article For Sotomayor, Humble Beginnings to High Court Pick.  Also check out the slideshow provided by the New York Times.

Republicans seem to be split on her nomination. Some feel that going after Judge Sotomayor with guns blazing could send a wrong message to latino voters.  Others feel that she’s too liberal with some hollering filibuster before her name was even announced.

There seem to be some questions regarding whether Judge Sotomayor would become the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.  Some are saying Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who was a Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1932 until his death in 1938, was Hispanic.  Justice Cardoza was of Portuguese and Jewish ancestry.  In Portugal they speak Portuguese not Spanish.  According to this blog post by Robert Schlesinger at US News & World Report:

It’s been widely reported that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, though a few people (including some TV commentators) have wondered whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo (on the court from 1932-1938) should not in fact be counted as such.

The answer seems to be that Sotomayor would in fact be the first Hispanic, but it also points up the problem inherent in the term Hispanic.

Cardozo, Josh Marshall reports, was of Portuguese ancestry (Cardozo biographer Andrew Kaufman says that Cardozo “family legend” has them coming from Portugal, but without “firm documentation about the particulars”). Which brings us to the critical question: What sort of ancestry qualifies as Hispanic? There are three strikes against the Cardozo-as-Hispanic thesis, all having to do with the fact that Portuguese natives speak … Portuguese (rather than Spanish).

* A TPM reader notes that the Associated Press defines Hispanic as coming from a Spanish-speaking country, and distinguishes Hispanic from those of Brazilian and Portuguese descent.

* Webster’s dictionary defines Hispanic thusly: “Of or relating to the language, people, or culture of Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America.”

* The U.S. Census uses the Office of Management and Budget’s definition of Hispanic: “The term ‘Hispanic’ refers to persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America, and other Spanish cultures.”

Portugal is on the Iberian peninsula, but is most certainly not Spanish. So Cardozo is not Hispanic. Or, presumably, Latino (the Census asks people whether they are Hispanic or Latino, since the words have different meanings in different parts of the country).

In my eyes Judge Sonia Sotomayor would become the first Hispanic/Latino Supreme Court Justice.

Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

Yesterday President Obama celebrated Memorial Day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

Unfortunately there was controversy which the president avoided.  It’s a custom to send a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument but a group of professors petitioned the president to break that tradition.

Last week, a group of about 60 professors petitioned the White House, asking the first black U.S. president to break tradition and not memorialize military members from the Confederacy, the group of Southern states that supported slavery.

“The Arlington Confederate Monument is a denial of the wrong committed against African-Americans by slave owners, Confederates and neo-Confederates, through the monument’s denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes,” the petitioners said. “This implies that the humanity of Africans and African-Americans is of no significance.”

The White House ignored the request.

Instead of breaking the tradition the president sent wreaths to the Arlington Confederate Monument and the African American Civil War Memorial in D.C.’s historically black U Street neighborhood.  That memorial honors 200,000 black soldiers who fought for the North during the Civil War.

The reinvention of Newsweek Magazine

The new and reinvented Newsweek came out recently.   I received my copy in the mail yesterday.  It looks different and it has a different feel to it as well. The layout is much different from the old Newsweek.  When I read about the changes I was expecting some thin magazine with only 40 pages. They surprised me with 92 pages even though some of those pages are filled with ads.

According to Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham:

There will, for the most part, be two kinds of stories in the new NEWSWEEK. The first is the reported narrative—a piece, grounded in original observation and freshly discovered fact, that illuminates the important and the interesting. The second is the argued essay—a piece, grounded in reason and supported by evidence, that makes the case for something.

Meacham also talks about the new structure of Newsweek:

This first issue of the reinvented NEWSWEEK is, we hope, a model of the form. We have rethought the structure of the magazine, and there are now only four sections: SCOPE (for short-form pieces, including Conventional Wisdom and the rechristened Indignity Index); THE TAKE (our columnists); FEATURES (longer-form narratives and essays); and THE CULTURE. The magazine will close with a graphic feature titled Back Story, a visual dissection or explanation of an important issue or phenomenon that will satisfy one’s curiosity or pique interest.

I started reading Newsweek while I was in high school and I’ve been subscribing to the magazine since, well forever.  Before the Information Age invaded our world, magazines like Newsweek and Time let me know what was going on not only in the United States but the world.  My current subscription ends in late July. I’ve been debating as to whether it’s worth renewing my subscription. Old reading habits are hard to let go. Yes I still read the magazine and I also check out the Newsweek.com site on a regular basis.  I guess the next few issues will help me decide whether to renew.

The current issue features an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama.

A Conversation with Barack Obama

What he’s like now

By Jon Meacham
NEWSWEEK

He did it because he could. Last Wednesday, in the gathering cool of late afternoon, Marine One brought President Barack Obama to the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. As he climbed down the steps of the helicopter, returning the salute of the Marine guard, he was slated to stride straight on to Air Force One, for a flight west to the heat of Arizona. Looking to his right, however, he saw a small crowd of schoolchildren and military personnel gathered with cameras and homemade signs. Abruptly but gracefully, the president broke toward the spectators; gathered journalists and security scurried to follow his lead. He shook every outstretched hand and, reaching the end of the line, deftly avoided eye contact with the gaggle of reporters. As he turned to make the walk back to Air Force One, a breeze blew—and everyone scurried anew, to keep up with him.

It was that kind of day—and it has been that kind of presidency: Barack Obama, moving as he wishes to move, and the world bending itself to him. Four hours later, sitting comfortably in his airborne office, coatless with a crimson tie, his laptop open, his blue Air Force One flight jacket hanging on the back of his swivel chair, the president was, as ever, in control. (He acknowledged that he saw the new Star Trek recently because “everybody was saying I was Spock.”) After a series of questions about what he has learned in his first months in the White House, I asked him whether he would read over a paragraph from his book, The Audacity of Hope, and react to it.

Check out the rest of the article here.

A Highly Logical Approach

What He’s Learned
A Conversation with Barack Obama

By Jon Meacham
NEWSWEEK

In a 30-minute interview aboard Air Force One en route from Washington to Phoenix last Wednesday, President Obama talked with NEWSWEEK’s Jon Meacham about Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Dick Cheney—and Star Trek. Edited excerpts:

Meacham: The theme here is what you’ve learned. What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to do?

The President: Order 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan. There is a sobriety that comes with a decision like that because you have to expect that some of those young men and women are going to be harmed in the theater of war. And making sure that you have thought through every angle and have put together the best possible strategy, but still understanding that in a situation like Afghanistan the task is extraordinarily difficult and there are no guarantees, that makes it a very complicated and difficult decision.

Check out the entire interview with President Obama here.

Meet the ROTUS, aka Darienne Page

Most of us know that POTUS means President of the United States and FLOTUS means First Lady of the United States. So what’s a ROTUS? That’s the Receptionist of the United States and President Barack Obama has one. Her name is Darienne Page.

From Serving in Iraq to Welcoming White House Guests
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — Have you met Rotus?

This is a question President Obama has taken to asking some of his visitors to the White House. In a bureaucratic world awash in abbreviations and acronyms, this one in particular seems to amuse him.

Mr. Obama, of course, is Potus (president of the United States). Michelle Obama is Flotus (first lady of the United States). And the title of Rotus (receptionist of the United States) is worn by Darienne M. Page.

“This is the receptionist of the entire United States,” Mr. Obama said, introducing Ms. Page to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

“How long was your confirmation hearing?” Mr. Holder asked with a smile.

“You want to say, ‘Hello, Potus,’ ” Ms. Page said later, recalling her interactions with Mr. Obama, who picked up the Rotus nickname from young aides and now uses it nearly every time he sees her. “But then you say, ‘Hello, Mr. President.’ ”

Ms. Page presides over the beehive of activity that is the West Wing lobby of the White House. At 27, she is among the hundreds of young aides who help the new administration tick. But her vantage point offers a considerably closer view of this presidency than most of them.

She is on hand to greet nearly every official visitor who has an appointment with the president or his top advisers. She oversees the front of the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, serving coffee to former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, making small talk with a delegation from Kazakhstan and trying to chew a mouthful of almonds quickly before saying hello to Tiger Woods as he stands at her desk.

Ms. Page graduated from high school in Maryland and joined the military, following in the footsteps of other family members. She served as an Army sargeant in Iraq and worked as a paralegal taking depositions in the Abu Ghraib prison.

For her $36,000-a-year salary, Ms. Page schedules all the activity in the Roosevelt Room, just steps from the Oval Office, and in the Wardroom Room, which is outside the White House mess hall. Even with a dawn-to-dusk schedule, the meetings often run overtime, creating a logjam that she is left to contend with.

I’m sure she’s happy to be working for President Obama but that salary is awfully low, especially considering the cost of living here in the D.C. area.

Anyway check out the entire article here.