Michelle Obama – Military Spouses

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In her campaign travels Michelle has been meeting with the Spouses of our Military Personal, holding round table discussions on what their experiances are and giving a window into one of her causes if Barack is Elected and she becomes the First Lady.

CBS has a couple of video’s of a recent interview done with Michelle, touching on a number of issues of who she is and what she does, there’s also a report that accompanies.

Every few weeks, Obama meets with military spouses in swing states, where she presents herself as a kindred spirit and Barack Obama as the best choice for their families. She attended the two debates with military family members. And at the Democratic National Convention, she led a day of service on behalf of Blue Star Families for Obama, a two-month old group with the tagline: “Pro-Military, Pro-Obama.”

The spouses of service members captured her attention during a roundtable with working mothers, and she later hosted her first military-focused event in Fayetteville in May, a day before the North Carolina primary.

She will hold her seventh military spouses meeting Tuesday in Pensacola, Fla., following similar events in recent months in states heavily impacted by deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, including Virginia, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

At each roundtable, she sits on stage with several spouses, delivers prepared remarks and opens a discussion. The roundtables draws local media coverage, and she answers questions about her involvement when asked by national reporters, as she did during an interview with CNN at the Democratic convention.

“Mostly I am here to listen and to do a lot of learning and then to transfer that information into the heart and mind of my husband as he moves forth,” Michelle Obama said in Norfolk, Va., in August. “The commander in chief doesn’t just need to know how to lead the military, he needs to understand what war does to military families.”

Her work in this area offers a hint at what could dominate her time in the White House.

“If she becomes first lady, this will be her cause,” said Amanda McBreen, 47, a Marine wife who participated in the Norfolk roundtable and helps coordinate 24 state chapters of Blue Star Families for Obama.

In recents stop in Charlotte and Greensboro NC she held a couple of those round tables discussions, Michelle Obama makes stops in N.C., a video news report of the one in Charlotte and the one in Greensboro NC

The CBS report mentions an interview she also recently did with U.S. News & World Report.

I Would Work to Help Working Families and Military Families

“Mom,” Malia, our 10-year-old, said. “We have something important to tell you. We need to have a sleepover!”

That snapped me out of speech mode, with the bright lights and applause, and back into the role I love: Mom. The next night, 15 giggling girls-my daughters, the Biden granddaughters, and friends-took over our hotel room.

If Barack is elected president, I would be honored to be first lady. I would work daily on the issues closest to my heart: helping working women and families, particularly military families. But as my girls reminded me in Denver, even as first lady, my No. 1 job would still be Mom. At 7 and 10, our daughters are young. If we move to Washington, my first priority will be to ensure they stay grounded and healthy, with normal childhoods-including homework, chores, dance, and soccer.

We’ve talked to mothers whose salaries can’t cover the cost of groceries-but if they take a second job, they can’t afford the additional cost of child care. More than 22 million working women don’t have paid sick days. Millions of women are doing the same jobs as men-but they’re earning less.

It’s even harder for military spouses. Their husbands and wives are away serving our nation for months at a time. So they have to be Mom and Dad. They’re working, checking in on their in-laws, helping with homework, and doling out discipline-and every night, they’re praying with all their hearts for their loved ones’ safe return. These families aren’t asking the government to fix their problems. They’re asking for it to understand what’s happening to their families and to find real ways to help.

Here’s the CBS News interview video’s.

Part 1

Part 2

And occasionally, when our daughters insist, we’ll host sleepovers, too.