Speaker Pelosi on State of the Union

(Image Copyright: Daylife)

Don't miss today's edition of State of the Union with Candy Crowley, with an interview with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

This Week on the Hill..

WEDNESDAY 24TH: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

WEDNESDAY 24TH: Akis Toyoda, President of the Toyota Corporation is sworn in before his testimony at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

THURSDAY 25TH: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her papers at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, discussing the 2011 international affairs budget.

THURSDAY 25TH: President Barack Obama talks to House Majority Leader Hoyer in a recess of the bi-partisan healthcare summit at Blair House.

THURSDAY 25TH: Secretary Napolitano testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee about the 2011 budget.

FRIDAY 26TH: Speaker Pelosi talks to reporters at her weekly press conference.

FRIDAY 26TH: Representative Charlie Rangel (D:NY) leaves the House chamber.

FRIDAY 26TH: Veterans Secretary Eric Shinkseki testifies before the Senate Veterans Affairs committee regarding the 2011 fiscal veterans budget.

(Images Copyright: Daylife)

Desiree Rogers Stepping Down as Social Secretary

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 26, 2010

Statement from the President and the First Lady on Desiree Rogers

"We are enormously grateful to Desiree Rogers for the terrific job she's done as the White House Social Secretary. When she took this position, we asked Desiree to help make sure that the White House truly is the People's House, and she did that by welcoming scores of everyday Americans through its doors, from wounded warriors to local schoolchildren to NASCAR drivers. She organized hundreds of fun and creative events during her time here, and we will miss her. We thank her again for her service and wish her all the best in her future endeavors."

It is reported that Democratic fundraiser, Julianna Smoot will replace Rogers.

(Image Copyright: Getty)

The Bi-partisan Healthcare Summit

(Images Copyright: Daylife)

For comprehensive coverage of yesterday's event, with video visit here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/24/health-care-summit-breaki_n_473945.html

The National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal

President Obama with Theodore Sorensen

President Obama and Philippe De Montebello

President Obama and Rita Moreno

President Obama and Elie Wiesel

President Obama and Jessye Norman

(Images Copyright: Daylife)

The 2009 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Award ceremony was held at the White House last night. Among the recipients were Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, actress Rita Moreno, political speechwriter Theodore Sorenson and singer Jessye Norman. Speaker Pelosi, Sarah Jessica Parker and First Lady Michelle Obama were among the guests. Mrs Obama wore a Jason Wu dress.

Mrs O for the Washington Post

(Images Copyright Marvin Joseph/Getty Images)

The First Lady was interviewed by The Washington Post earlier this week, this two photographs part of the sitting. The topic? Mrs Obama's campaign to tackle childhood obesity. For the interview, Mrs O wore a Moschino sheath dress, last seen at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award Ceremony.

White House Candids: February 2010

Members of Congress at an economy and employment meeting

Meeting members of Congress

The President shakes hands with Bob Dylan

The First Family joins the performers on stage

The President, Vice President and guests applaud Joan Baez at the Civil Rights Concert

White House Counsel Meeting

All photos copyright Pete Souza/The White House

Ann Curry: My Life in Journalism

An Act of Faith

Journalism, says the Today show news anchor, should do more than inform. It should make you care.

By Ann Curry, New York, New York

"How do you keep doing what you do?” people ask me all the time.

It’s a good question.

Over the past two years alone, my work for NBC News has taken me to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, Congo and the edge of Darfur. Why is it I feel driven to cover these stories of human suffering, including Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunami, when it means leaving my husband and two children behind at home?

I don’t have to. Anchoring the news on Today and Dateline NBC keeps me busy enough.

To be honest, leaving my family for days—even weeks—at a time is painful. It also hurts to see the degree to which people suffer in parts of the world.

There are days when I wonder if I’m a bit traumatized by it all. But still, when these stories happen, I feel a call, an urgency, to report them because I know I can give voice to those who need to be heard. Not only do they deserve that, but you deserve it too.

Your knowing about what’s happening in the rest of the world gives you a chance to care, and it is that empathy that offers the greatest hope. You see, I believe journalism is an act of faith in the future. That might sound strange in this day and age when so much on TV seems scandalous or frivolous. But then, I am my parents’ child, living lessons that have guided me from the beginning.

My father, Bob Curry, was a career Navy man who enlisted right out of high school. My mother was the daughter of a Japanese rice farmer. Her name was Hiroe.

They met when Dad was stationed in Japan as part of the Allied occupation forces after World War II. The war left my mom’s family without seed to grow their crop, so at 18 she found a job in the city as a streetcar conductor. My dad happened to get on her streetcar one day, and knew he had to see her again. He took that streetcar every day until he worked up the nerve to ask her on a date. They went out for noodles and fell headlong in love.

Back then the Navy frowned on marriages between American servicemen and Japanese women, and shipped my father out before a ceremony could take place. It took two years, but he managed to get sent back to Japan. He told me of taking her into his arms again, only to realize she was extremely thin. It turned out she had tuberculosis and wasn’t expected to live.

He used her healthy sister’s lung X rays to get clearance from Navy doctors, and married her anyway. Now that she was a U.S. military wife, she was able to get the care she needed. She survived to become the mother of five, of which I’m the oldest.

Dad stayed in the Navy for nearly 30 years, and so our family moved often. We lived in Guam, Japan, Hawaii, Virginia, California, until he finally retired in Ashland, Oregon, where I finished high school.

An enlisted man’s salary didn’t go far when there were five kids to raise. My parents couldn’t give us much in the way of material possessions, but they made sure we knew the importance of family and honor, character and love.

Mom was the embodiment of perseverance in the face of adversity. She’d endured bombing raids and starvation during the war, TB during the occupation and racism when she came to the U.S. At that time it was hard for people to accept her.

“Gambaru,” she used to tell me, which is Japanese for “Never ever give up, even and especially when there’s no chance of winning.” She’d been raised Buddhist, but when she needed spiritual sustenance in America, she couldn’t find a temple. She finally found the Catholic church.

She didn’t know a word of Latin and her English wasn’t good either, but that didn’t stop her. She felt close to God in church, and that’s what mattered. Besides, she had me to tell her when to stand, kneel or sit during the service.

Life as a mixed-race child in a poor family wasn’t easy. “Ann, this is good for you,” Dad would say when I complained. “Trials and tribulations make you stronger.”

He got tired of hearing all five of his kids whine. One day he announced, “The next person who says, ‘That’s not fair’ is going to drop and do ten push-ups. I don’t care where we are.” Doing 10 on the sidewalk in front of a bunch of people? We did it, and learned quickly whining didn’t accomplish anything.

That might not have meant so much if it weren’t for one time we got on a bus. It was crowded and the five of us jumped into empty seats before Dad could get one. “That’s not fair,” he said. We looked at him. Without another word, he dropped down in the aisle and did 10 push-ups! To see our father be true to his word was a great lesson in character.

When I got older, Dad and I would have dinner-table debates about the Vietnam War. I was a teenager deeply affected by Walter Cronkite’s reports on the war and I questioned our country’s role. Sometimes our discussions got so heated, my siblings would pick up their plates and leave the table.

“I don’t always agree with you,” Dad would say at the end, “but I’d still vote for you for president.” I knew he was proud of me for caring about something bigger, something beyond my day-to-day high school life. It tied in to what he was always telling me, “Do something of service, Ann. So that at the end of your days, you’ll know your time here mattered.”

I decided the best way to do that was to be a journalist. He respected my choice, and a girl could not have asked for a greater cheerleader than I had in my dad.

My father and I were the first in our family to go to college, and we went at the same time. He was on the GI bill. I got a few small scholarships and did all kinds of work to pay my way through the University of Oregon—bookstore clerk, sandwich maker, hotel maid.

I got a job as an intern at KTVL, the local TV station, but when I applied to be a reporter, the producer told me there’d never been a woman reporter in the newsroom because women didn’t have news judgment. Do you think the daughter of Hiroe and Bob Curry would let that dissuade her? Of course not. I convinced him to give me a chance.

I became the station’s first woman reporter. When I left for a bigger city, that producer called me and said I should never let anything he told me stop me from my dreams.

Eventually I got to Los Angeles, where I covered big breaking stories, but the one I remember most was about a boy who was born with his thumb fused to his hand. He was miserable because kids made fun of him, but his parents were poor immigrants who couldn’t afford surgery.

A nurse caught the story on TV, talked to a surgeon and they arranged for the boy to have the operation free. His family invited me to the recovery room. The boy proudly held up his hand and said, “Thank you.” At that moment, I understood why my father pushed me to use my talents to serve others. I felt an incredible sense of fulfillment knowing one small thing I did helped make a difference in someone else’s life.

I joined NBC News in the 1990s, and found myself drawn to telling stories of people who might otherwise not be heard. Interestingly enough, what some might consider a big professional disappointment—not being named cohost of Today when Katie Couric left—has only clarified my mission. I would’ve loved that job, but not getting it made me think, What is it I need to be doing?

The answer was clear: humanitarian reporting—finding those who are suffering far from the eyes of the world and getting their stories out, making people care about them. That’s what brings me back to places like Congo. Most people don’t realize it is the site of the deadliest conflict since World War II. The fighting and war crimes against civilians challenge every definition of decency. Thousands die every month from malnutrition and disease.

Yet even in this place of suffering, it is possible to find hope. I’ll never forget Sifa, an 18-year-old Congolese woman I met in February 2008. I talked to her in the hospital. What she told me made me weep. Her parents were killed in front of her. She ran, but the killers caught her, chained her to a tree and raped her. She became pregnant; when the baby came, everything inside her broke. “Do you want revenge?” I asked.

She said, “No, all I want is to rise from this bed, thank the people who helped me and work for God.”

Almost without thinking, my fingers went to my necklace. It had a little gold charm, the Sanskrit symbol for peace. Peace was my prayer for her and her country. I took the necklace off and clasped it around her neck. For her dignity I walked out of the room without looking back. But my producer was watching. He said she raised her head in a little bow.

How do I keep doing what I do? I believe in people like Sifa, who can teach us all about resilience. And I believe in you. I know you special souls will care about people like her, who have no one to protect them.

I have faith that once you hear about someone’s suffering—even someone whose language you can’t speak, whose customs you don’t share—you will care enough to help.

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Interview and image copyright Guideposts (www.guideposts.com)

A belated Biden Valentines Day

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Vice President and Dr Biden celebrated a belated Valentines Day in New York City on Saturday, dining at River Cafe.

Huffington Post reports that the pair ordered pear salad and a warm goats cheese and potato terrine, followed by sirloin steak (VP) and bass with grilled artichoke puree (Dr B.)

More can be read here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/joe-jill-biden-celebrate_n_471327.html

A Day in the Life of the President

On November 2nd 2009, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune was invited to the White House to photograph a day in the life of President Obama. These images are some of those captured.

Meeting with the economic advisor

Chairing an economic meeting

Taking notes

Meeting former classmates from Harvard Law School

Congratulating White House staffers in their participation in the Marine Corps Marathon

Reading a note

Waiting for the White House Counsel meeting

Dusk begins to set

Heading back to the residence

(Images Copyright: Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

The Governor's Ball

(Image Copyright: Getty)

The Annual Governor's Ball was held at the White House last night, ahead of the National Governor's Meeting in Washington DC this week. The First Lady wore a black evening dress by Thakoon to the event.

Glee Club at the White House

(Images Copyright: AP)

The First Lady invited students from The Myrtilla Miner Elementary School Glee Club to a special preview of the talent performing at the White House annual Governors Ball. Harry Connick Jr and his band performed a number of songs, before the Glee Club took to the stage. For the event, Mrs O wore a black shift with a criss-crossed pattern detail, a black cardigan and her Alaia belt.