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Presidential News
President And Daughters Have Daddy-Daughter Time In NYC
President Obama walks in Central Park with daughters, Sasha and Malia. Also joining them was his sister and her husband.
Barack Obama, who hap- pens to be president, set out to combat that trend by hanging out with his teenage girls on a New York overnighter.
The trio, plus some of the girls' friends, seemed intent on packing a lot into their 24 hours together in New York City, where eldest daughter, Malia is interning.
The teens slept in on a rainy Saturday morning after zigzagging around Manhattan in dad's motorcade into the wee hours on Friday night.
They finally emerged about 11:30 a.m., as the sun broke though, for a quick stroll through Central Park, joined by the president's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng and her husband, Konrad Ng. Next it was lunch in Gramercy Park at Upland, featuring California- inspired cuisine.
Then they also took in the matinee show of "Hamilton," the hit hip-hop Broadway mu- sical about the Founding Fa- thers.
A New York weekend was the President’s idea. He often
laments that his girls are less interested in spending time with him now that they are older. But the concept gets a little complicated, of course, when dad is the president.
President Obama's every move requires massive secu- rity precautions that tied the bustling streets of New York in knots, and he can attract throngs of onlookers in an in- stant.
The 20-minute walk in Cen- tral Park prompted pedicabs, bikers, skaters, horse-drawn carriages and walkers to stop cold as people whipped out cellphone cameras to capture the moment.
Hearty cheers went up from the street corner late Friday as the Obamas left Carbone, where a crowd had massed when word spread that Pres- ident Obama was eating there.
But after more than 6 1/2 years in the White House fish- bowl, Malia, 17, and Sasha, 14, have adjusted to all the at- tention and they know how to carry on.
Sasha and two girlfriends hopped aboard Air Force One for the trip to New York with- out even a hint that they had noticed the photographers and TV cameras pointed in their direction Friday.
Malia was there to meet them in New York. She has been interning on the set of HBO's "Girls" this summer.
First Lady Michelle Obama sat this trip out.
"They're hitting the age where they still love me, but they think I'm completely bor- ing. And so they'll come in, pat me on the head, talk to me for 10 minutes, and then they're gone all weekend," the presi- dent told an interview last month. "They break my heart."
Beyond New York's innate appeal, President Obama's visit to the city also may have given the president a chance to give more thought to where the family will land when they leave the White House in Jan- uary 2017. New York is among the cities that get the most speculation.
A Database Being Created To Measure Disparities And Segregation
President Obama is using his executive power to create a database for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”
Federal personnel are min- ing data on health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.
This stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases. They include “dis- parate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities;
schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for mi- norities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal back- grounds.
The President wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.
Now civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to use them to show patterns of racial disparities and segregation.
Nigeria Left Off President Obama’s Africa Trip Itinerary; But Nation’s President Has U.S. Meeting Today
Nigeria felt slighted when President Obama over- looked the vast nation on his first African trip as head of state in 2009, instead visiting its shrimp-sized neighbor, Ghana, where he lauded the smaller country's democratic achievements.
The President left Nigeria out again in his 2013 visit to Africa. Now, as he prepares for his third and likely final trip to the continent as president, Nigeria is once more being by- passed in favor of Kenya and Ethiopia.
However, on Monday (today), President Obama hosted the new Nigerian presi- dent in Washington for talks on increased U.S. assistance in the war against Boko Haram, an Islamic State-linked group with a horrific human rights record.
The White House has de- scribed Buhari's visit as mark- ing "our support for the Nigerian people following their historic elections and peaceful transfer of power."
Nigeria, the continent's most populous country, is sub- Saharan Africa's largest econ- omy and an important source of oil for the United States. Its hurt pride at being left off Obama's itinerary comes at a time of damaged relations be- tween the two countries.
U.S. officials have also indi- cated their willingness to coop- erate with Nigeria in its bid to recover billions of dollars in government funds looted by past officials and salted away in
foreign bank accounts. Attempts at military cooper-
ation in the fight against the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram crumbled toward the end of former President Goodluck Jonathan's term. Jonathan was defeated in the March election by former mili- tary dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
"President [Obama] has long seen Nigeria as arguably the most important strategic country in sub-Saharan Africa. The question is would there be an opportunity to deepen our engagement and that opportu- nity is now," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, according to the Reuters news agency.
Given that, it's not immedi- ately clear why President Obama chose to leave Nigeria off his itinerary. A key factor may be that the United States views East Africa overall as more important strategically than West Africa. (Kenya and Ethiopia are in the east, Nige- ria in the west.) And Kenya has personal resonance for the President, whose father was born there.
Nigerian president Muham- madu Buhari is meeting with President Obama today (Mon- day) at the White House.
PAGE 6 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, JULY 21, 2015