Posted on 12/07/2002 6:37:48 AM PST by BigWaveBetty
Written on White House stationary in his own hand in 1927, President Calvin Coolidge issued the first official Christmas message to the American people. As a response to numerous requests for the President to send a holiday greeting, President Coolidge asked newspapers across the United States to publish his holiday greeting to the American people. Although he didn't speak, he participated in the first ceremonial tree lighting for the event now known as the Pageant of Peace.
President Eisenhower expanded the list of Presidential Christmas cards recipients significantly in 1953; the President sent season’s greetings to American ambassadors abroad, members of the Cabinet and Congress, foreign heads of state and government officials. Thereafter, the official Presidential Holiday Greeting was the White House Christmas card.
Artist Adrian Martinez of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, designed the 2001 holiday card which features the Second Floor Corridor of the White House with Mary Cassatt's 1908 painting, Young Mother and Two Children. Mrs. Bush selected the Psalm for the card on September 16. At Camp David, the chaplain based his sermon on the Psalm, which was outlined in the lectionary for that September Sunday.
2001 White House Tree
The President and Mrs. Bush stand next to the 2001 tree, an 18-foot Concolor fir that was grown in the mountains of Central Pennsylvania. For ornaments, artists from all 50 states and the District of Columbia designed miniature replicas of historic houses from their regions.
See the past cards from The White House from Hoover to to Bush 41.
And there's no trap door under Helen's seat?
BILL Clinton is using his substantial mental faculties to analyze one of the great enigmas of our time: Harvey Weinstein.
"Something happens to you when you’re a child and makes you feel that if you really want to have an impact in life, you have to be in a hurry - and you can’t be milquetoast," Bubba tells Ken Auletta in this week’s New Yorker profile of the Miramax chief. [What the Sam Hill does this mean? He's obviously talking about himself.]
"I don’t know much about [Weinstein’s] life before he got heavy into politics, but there’s something that planted a deep yearning in him that would let him define the work of his life, at least in part, by how much he got done quick," says Clinton, who has worked closely with Weinstein on several Democratic fund-raising campaigns.
"I think guys like him, and me, if you’re not careful, you miss a lot of other things in life." Page Six
Also from Page Six:
FOR a supposed man of the people, Harlem Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel sure doesn’t travel like one. At Thursday night’s birthday party for Margo Catsimatidis, wife of supermarket tycoon John, he told guests he had been forced by the snow to take the subway for "the first time in ages." Also on hand: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Andrew Cuomo and Sale Johnson. [Isn't Sale Johnson one of x42's girlfriends? Hillary certainly is magnanimous.
A week after signing the largest property tax increase in the city's history, Mayor Bloomberg is now making a different kind of history - he's got the lowest approval rating of any mayor in more than a decade, an exclusive Daily News poll shows. Thirty-one percent of city folk approved of the job being done by the businessman-turned-politician, well below the darkest days of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose popularity sank to a low of 40% after the police shooting of Amadou Diallo in February 1999....
[A]ny credit that Bloomberg might earn on the quality-of-life front has, for now, been swamped by opposition to his tax-and-slash budget plan, which includes an 18.5% property tax hike and $780 million in new service cuts between now and June 30. Nearly half of all those polled said they expect the budget cuts to have a large impact on their family's well-being, with blacks and Hispanics expecting to be particularly hard hit. Fifty-three percent said the same about his property tax hike. "Bloomberg is clearly paying the price for his tax increase and service cuts," said pollster Julie Weprin of Blum & Weprin Associates, the firm that conducted the survey for The News. full story
Keep raising taxes, Mike. The people always appreciate that.
Some celebrities bemoan the fact that their private lives are not private. Here's one who should have kept her mouth shut about her private life, apparently:
Whitney Houston's nationally televised confession that she has used drugs may spur action from child-welfare authorities in New Jersey, an official there said.
The singer, who confessed to ABC's Diane Sawyer last week that she has taken cocaine, pills, marijuana and alcohol, has a 9-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, with husband Bobby Brown - who admitted he smoked pot to alleviate a "bipolar" disorder.
"Due to the confidentiality rules, I wouldn't be able to comment specifically if we are investigating someone or not," N.J. Division of Youth and Family Services spokesman Joseph Delmar told us on Friday. NY Daily News.
At my age, they mean one in the same thing.
:~p
A young child of my acquaintance, instructed by his mother to "behave," responded plaintively, "But mommy, I am being have!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.