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And it became clear that there was a stark difference in the intimacy of Trumps photos compared with those from President Barack Obamas first 100 days, likely because of the wealth of images captured and shared by White House photographer Pete Souza. (You can revisit them all thanks to the archive on theObama White House Flickr.)

Souza captured many iconic images during Obamas first 100 days, ranging from private Super Bowl screenings with 3D glasses to quiet moments with first lady Michelle Obama.

Check out photos from Obamas first 100 days below. You might just see one of your favorites.

Pete Souza/The White House

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama share a private moment in a freight elevator at an inaugural ball in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama rides the elevator to the private residence of the White House after attending 10 inaugural balls and being sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama sits in the Oval Office on his first day in office, Jan. 21, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden laugh together in the Oval Office on Jan. 22, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama watches Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' first press briefing on television, in his private study off the Oval Office on Jan. 22, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama is briefed beforemaking phone calls to foreign leaders in the Oval Office on Jan. 26, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama greets kitchen staff beforea lunch at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 27, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama wipes his face with a cloth handed to him by White House butler Von Everett in the Blue Room of the White House following an event with business leaders in the East Room on Jan. 28, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and the first ladywear 3D glasses while watching a TV commercial during Super Bowl XLIII, Arizona Cardinals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, in the family theater of the White House on Feb. 1, 2009. Guests included family, friends, Cabinet members, staff members and bipartisan members of Congress.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas move a couch in the Oval Office on Feb. 2, 2009. Douglas met with the president about the economic recovery plan.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama wears a Air Force Onejacket on his first flight aboard the planefrom Andrews Air Force Base to Newport News, Virginia, on Feb. 5. 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama looks at a portrait of President James Madison while waiting in the Blue Room of the White House beforehis press conference in the East Room on Feb. 9, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama meets with senior advisors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Feb. 16, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama takes aim with a photographer's camera backstage before deliveringremarks about providing mortgage payment relief for responsible homeowners at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, on Feb. 18, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and the first ladydance while the band Earth, Wind and Fire performs at the Governors Ball in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 22, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama waves to members of Congress beforeaddressing the joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama plays with a football in the Outer Oval Office on March 4, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

The presidentand the first lady walk to Marine One on the South Lawn before heading to Camp David on March 7, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama examines the Resolute Desk on March 3, 2009, while visiting with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg in the Oval Office. In a famous photograph, her brother John F. Kennedy Jr., peeked through the FDR panel, while his father worked.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama runs down the East Colonnade with family dog Bo on the dog's initial visit to the White House on March 15, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama practices his golf swing at an outdoor hold prior to an event at the Miguel Contreras Learning Center in Los Angeles on March 19, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama walks to a podium in the Cross Hall, Grand Foyer of the White House, before making a statement regarding the American auto industry, on March 30, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama confers with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during the G-20 Summit on April 2, 2009, at the ExCel Centre in London.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama lifts up a baby on April 4, 2009, during the U.S. Embassy greeting at a Prague hotel.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama receives a fist-bump from a U.S. soldier as he greets hundreds of U.S. troops during his visit to Camp Victory, Iraq, on April 7, 2009.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama makes his way down the stairs of Air Force One on April 8, 2009, upon his arrival to Andrews Air Force Base returning from Baghdad, Iraq.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak together sitting at a picnic table on April 9, 2009, on the South Lawn of the White House.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama cheers on a young child as she rolls her egg toward the finish line April 13, 2009, during the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Pete Souza/The White House

Obama and Biden walk back to the Oval Office after putting on the White House putting green on April 24, 2009.

Excerpt from:
It's Hard To Forget The Best Photos From Obama's First 100 Days - Huffington Post

Voxs Ezra Klein says Elizabeth Warren is one of the Democrats most capable of defining the Democratic Partys soul and message in a post-Trump era. But, as she wrote in her new book The Fight is Our Fight, that doesnt mean shes always on the same page as the partys top dog.

She mentioned a speech President Obama gave in the summer of 2016 in which he said, the system isnt as rigged as you think.

Warren said he got it wrong. No, President Obama, the system is as rigged as we think, she said. In fact, its worse than most Americans realize.

Klein, in an interview posted on Wednesday, asked her what people miss about rigging. The senior senator from Massachusetts and founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, of course, had plenty to say on the topic.

She explained that there are the obvious ways that we are well aware of, like the campaign contributions and the armies of lobbyists.

But its so much more, she said.

Its bought-and-paid-for experts who testify before Congress and are quoted in the press, Warren continued. Its think tanks that are funded by shadowy money and always have a particular point of view that just seems to help the rich and the powerful get richer and more powerful.

She wrote of the revolving door of executives who work on Wall Street for 20 years, then work in the Treasury for a bit, and then head right back to Wall Street.

The giant payouts that they give to people to go work in government are just stunning. I mean, millions of dollars, Warren said.

She wasnt finished. Not by a long shot.

Money pervades. Its whose phone calls do you take. Its who you see in the evenings. Its who are your old friends, Warren told Klein. Its every part of it, so that the rich and the powerful are incredibly well-represented, not just at the top in the White House but all the way through government in this town.

You can listen to the full interview on Ezra Kleins podcast.

Continue reading here:
Elizabeth Warren says Obama got it wrong: It's worse than Americans realize - MarketWatch

Washington Post

Obama urges next generation to 'knock down barriers' BBC News Former President Barack Obama embraced a warm homecoming at University of Chicago, where he stepped back into the public eye while hosting a youth forum on civic engagement. "What's been going on while I've been gone?" he quipped as he entered ... In Chicago, Obama tells young leaders that 'special interests dominate the debates in Washington'Washington Post Obama Steps Back Into Public Life, Trying to Avoid One Word: TrumpNew York Times Obama re-emerges in public after avoiding political spotlightCNN NBCNews.com -TIME -Chicago Tribune -New York Times all 755 news articles »

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Obama urges next generation to 'knock down barriers' - BBC News

Former US president Obama wade[d] into the French election fight on Thursday with a highly publicized phone call to French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.

Obama stopped short of a formal endorsement, but it was made clear to everyone that he supports Macron, a former investment banker.

Macrons main competition at the head of what has become a four-way race includes two right-wing candidates, and the leftist Jean-Luc Mlenchon.

In a reflection of the division within the Democratic Party of the US, a group of people who led Bernie SandersBernie SandersSanders: Trump tax plan makes 'rigged' system 'worse' Planned Parenthood Action Fund launches GOTV effort in Montana special election Obama plants himself on the wrong side of French elections MORE campaign has endorsed Mlenchon and likened his struggle to that of Sanders, including similar spurious charges against both of them.

It is difficult to gauge the effect of Obamas intervention. While he is popular in France, it is worth noting that he intervened against Brexit before the vote, even going to the UK to campaign against it, and it still passed. So it is possible that Obamas endorsement will have the unintended effect of boosting right-wing, xenophobic nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen, who has some similarity to the leaders of the Brexit movement in the UK.

Macron was previously finance minister in the current government of President Franois Hollande, who is deeply unpopular.

Hollande, of the Socialist Party, is disliked partly because of the state of the economy, which has had almost no growth in income per person over the last decade, and 10 percent unemployment. He is also unpopular because of the reforms that the prevailing political interests backed by the IMF and European Union authorities have proposed and implemented, ostensibly to solve Frances economic problems. (I have written more about this here and here.)

These reforms focus on cutting Frances budget deficit, as a well as reducing rigidities in the labor market. These include reducing eligibility for unemployment insurance, means-testing social benefits, and legal changes that reduce the bargaining power of labor unions. Macron himself can claim credit for the Macron law, which made it easier for employers to dismiss workers.

Macron also supports the enormously unpopular cuts to the pension system that have already been made, including raising the retirement age for full benefits from 65 to 67 (and early retirement from 60 to 62).

This was particularly harsh, even as compared to when the US made the same increase in the age for full benefits in our Social Security system in 1983. US workers affected by that reform were given decades of advance notice, while in France it hit workers who were much closer to retirement.

Fortunately for the US, Obama did not follow this kind of program in response to the Great Recession here, when we had 10 percent unemployment. He could have pushed for much more to stimulate a faster recovery and more employment, and he supported some deficit reduction when he shouldnt have, but he clearly did not attempt the kind of counterproductive policies that people like Macron are promoting in France.

In other words, Macron represents a neoliberal program that offers regressive solutions for Frances problems of mass unemployment and economic stagnation. It is also worth noting that Frances annual interest payments on its public debt are just 1.7 percent of GDP, so the public debt problem is being overhyped.

For his part, Mlenchon proposes a progressive economic program that includes additional spending of 275 billion euros (294 billion dollars), or about 2.3 percent of GDP over the next five years.

Like many economists, he is operating under the idea that the problem facing the French economy is inadequate demand, not a rigid labor market or the public debt. Spending priorities include public investment in renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions, antipoverty programs, public housing, and lowering the retirement age.

One of the criticisms that was leveled at Bernie Sanders during his campaign, that is is being reenacted in France, is that he was promising too much and would not get things done. But part of the job of a political leader is to provide a vision of what is feasible and desired by the majority, mobilize people behind it, and fight for it. Then, he or she accepts a compromise that is the best possible deal at the moment, while continuing to fight for their program.

Like Bernie Sanders in the US, Mlenchon is a politician with 30 years experience in the legislative and executive branches of government, and electoral politics. He is not some young anarchist hurling tear gas canisters back at the police. He will know when to compromise for something that moves the ball down the field, and keep pushing for more.

It is sad to see Obama, as ex-president, throwing his weight against progress in France, and also in the US, where he intervened to preserve the status quo in the struggle for leadership of the Democratic Party in February.

Dont get me wrong. Obama was one of the best U.S. presidents in the past century, which unfortunately also says something about how low the bar for that contest is. The bar is especially low if we count, as human, the lives of non-US victims of US foreign policy, which is not often done in the Western mass media.

But Obama promised that as ex-president he would help reverse the Republican control of state governments that has allowed them to win national elections through gerrymandering US congressional districts and further disenfranchising Democratic voters. Without this gerrymandering and voter suppression, it isquestionable whether the Republicans could ever have national power in US. This is a worthy cause, and he could be a great ex-president by working on it, rather than trying to thwart progressive change in France and Europe.

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of Failed: What the Experts Got Wrong About the Global Economy (2015, Oxford University Press).

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Obama plants himself on the wrong side of French elections - The Hill (blog)

Joshua Lott / Stringer / Getty

By Sen. Rand Paul

Real men (as well as pull-no-punches women) cut taxes. The lesser mortals that tend to inhabit Washington wring their hands and get all weak in the knees when it comes to cutting taxes. Rumors are President Trump will propose a real tax cut. I certainly hope so.

Once upon a time, most Republicans believed in tax cuts. Somewhere along the way, inside the beltway especially, Republicans forgot about the benefits of cutting taxes. Republicans became more concerned with government keeping its revenue than letting the people keep their money.

Too many Republican have become timid about tax cuts, often spouting the milquetoast line of revenue neutral tax cuts.

Let me translate that little bit of Washington-speak for you. Revenue neutral tax cuts arent really tax cuts. Its more like tax shifting. Some will pay more. Some will pay less. And the net effect will be that government will collect the same amount of taxes.

If revenue neutral tax shifting is what Republicans stand for, maybe its time we re-evaluated what we really stand for.

What will revenue neutral tax cut mean to your business? Well, that may depend on how expensive your lobbyist is. Which side of the revenue-neutral ledger you wind up on may depend on how well the skids are greased, hardly, a pleasant scenario to anticipate.

I believe as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did, that the best way to stimulate our economy, promote job growth, and give our ailing middle class a raise is to cut taxes for all.

I know Donald Trump believes this too, because he said so often during the campaign, and as a job creator himself, he knows that lower taxes and less regulation are the keys to more jobs.

This week, we are expected to hear the beginnings of the Trump Tax Reform plan. I, for one, urge the President to stick to his guns and not to preemptively surrender to the establishment in Congress and to offer real, meaningful cuts to individuals and businesses, across all income levels.

It is likely the single most important thing he will do in his first year in office to determine our economic growth over the next several years. Our economy has grown at an anemic two percent average over the last 15 years. Historically, it has been nearly double that. We have lost more than three TRILLION dollars in GDP to this anemic growth, according to economist Stephen Moore.

We cannot allow this to continue, so I urge the President to go big and bold.

But also to go simple.

As he has likely already seen, people often try to make things to complicated or clever up here in Congress. Obamacare repeal is a great example. So, learning from that lesson, lets make this simple.

We dont need hundreds of special interests grabbing for goodies. We wont need 2,000-page bills.

We need a big, bold tax cut. My suggestions from among the ideas that I have championed and Donald Trump ran on are simple. First, cut the corporate tax rate. Ours is now the highest in the world at 35 percent. We should immediately cut it to 15 percent or less, putting us in line with other countries. Money and business go where theyre welcome, and right now, thats not the United States. We can change that, and do it easily, while creating millions of new jobs. At that low rate, we can also eliminate deductions and loopholes, and make the tax simple and fair.

American regulatory and tax treatment of business has in recent years led to major corporations moving overseas or leaving their overseas profits offshore. Currently, they are double taxed, with a 35 percent penalty for bringing this money home. I authored a bipartisan bill last year to allow repatriation of that capital at 6.5 percent, bringing home as much as 2 trillion in capital for job growth, and increased revenue. (My bill would direct that revenue into an infrastructure fund).

Finally, we must make sure every income level receives a cut, and that small businesses organized under various parts of the tax code get the benefit of the corporate tax cut.

Im hoping the President has learned three things from his Obamacare repeal experience. First, work with the true fiscal conservatives in Congress to come up with a great tax plan. Second, keep it simple, and make sure everyone in America will both know and see the benefits. Finally, remember who elected you, and heed this advice no one ever knocked doors or made phone calls for revenue neutral tax reform. If you want to drain the swamp, you have to take away money from Washington, and send it back to the people.

I stand ready to cut taxes for every American and get our economy moving again.

Donald TrumpJohn F. KennedyMenObamacarerand paulRepublicansRonald ReagantaxesTrump Tax Reform

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Rand Paul: Real Men Cut Taxes - The Libertarian Republic