Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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President’s Visit to Africa

07/04/2013 Nativegrl77

The Best Photos from the President’s Visit to Africa

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, as well as daughters Sasha and Malia, just returned from their June 26 – July 3 visit to Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania. And our photographers have chosen some of their favorite photos from the trip — capturing some incredible behind-the-scenes moments.

Click here to view a photo recap of the First Family’s trip.

We’re Listening to Businesses about the Health Care Law

As we implement the Affordable Care Act, we have and will continue to make changes as needed. In our ongoing discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this right. We are listening. So in response to your concerns, we are cutting red tape and giving businesses more time to comply

Earlier this year, legendary singer and songwriter Carole King was honored at the White House as the recipient of the 2013 Gershwin Prize for Popular song. King is the first woman to receive the award, which was created in 2007 by the Library of Congress to recognize “the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture”.

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Powering Africa

Nearly 70 percent of Africans lack access to electricity, and yesterday, President Obama visited the Ubungo Symbion Power Plant in Dar es Salaam to highlight a new initiative called Power Africa, which aims to double the number of people across the continent who have access to power.

The Case For Action

07/01/2013 Nativegrl77


DAILY SNAPSHOT Friday, June 28, 2013

The Case For Action

This week, the President gave a major speech on climate change policy, hosted a roundtable discussion with business leaders, named a new director of the FBI, and welcomed the next class of Presidential Innovation Fellows.

Click here to watch the latest installment of “West Wing Week.”

Senate Votes to Reform Our Nation’s Immigration System

Yesterday, 68 members of the U.S. Senate, Republicans and Democrats, came together and voted to reform our nation’s immigration system.

After our visit to the Martin Luther King School, we boarded a ferry to Goree Island, a small island off Senegal’s coast. For roughly three hundred years until the mid-1840s, countless men, women and children from Africa were kidnapped from their homes and communities and brought to this island to be sold as slaves.

Today we mark another important achievement for equal rights, this time for over a million Americans — and over 340 million people worldwide — who are blind, visually impaired, or with other print disabilities.

David Simas, The White House

06/26/2013 Nativegrl77

The carbon pollution that causes climate change isn’t a distant threat, the risk to public health isn’t a hypothetical, and it’s clear we have a moral obligation to act.

The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 years, and 2012 was the hottest one we’ve ever recorded. When carbon pollutes the air, the risk of asthma attacks increases. When the Earth’s atmosphere fundamentally changes, we see more heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods.

These events also create an economic imperative to act. When farms wash away and crops wilt, food prices go up. Last year, we saw 11 different weather disasters that each cost the United States more than $1 billion.

And confronting this challenge isn’t just about preventing disaster — it’s also about moving America forward in a way that creates hundreds of thousands of good, new, clean energy jobs. It’s about wasting less energy, which saves money for every business and every family in America.

So the debate’s over. It’s time for action.

Here’s what President Obama is announcing today. Check it out, then help to spread the word.

First, he’s laying out a plan to cut carbon pollution in America — by working to cut pollution from power plants, protect the health of our kids, boost clean energy, and revamp our transportation sector for the 21st century. Second, he’s preparing the United States for the impacts of these changes — by building stronger, safer communities and developing resources to make our country more resilient. And finally, he’s leading international efforts to combat global climate change.

We’ve put together a graphic that breaks this all down — from the effects we’re already seeing to the specific actions we’re going to take to lead this fight.

No single step can reverse the effects of climate change, but that’s no excuse for inaction. We have a moral obligation to leave our kids a planet that’s not broken and polluted.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan

Share President Obama’s plan to make sure people in your community understand why we’re taking these steps and what comes next.

Thanks!

David

David Simas Deputy Senior Advisor White House

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

the Fight for Climate Change

06/26/2013 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

Today, President Obama announced his plan to combat climate change. The plan isn’t perfect (nuclear power isn’t part of a responsible solution, and “clean coal” is a myth), but it contains many important steps.

Most importantly, the plan calls for the regulation of carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and an end to U.S. support for new coal plants overseas. These are monumental steps in the right direction.

CLICK HERE TO TELL THE PRESIDENT YOU SUPPORT THESE STEPS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

With the president’s leadership—and our support—we can continue to develop solutions that will protect our health, create jobs, cut energy costs for families and businesses, and give us cleaner, safer energy.

So, we need your help. Send a letter to the president today!

-The Earth Day Network Team

CLICK HERE TO TELL THE PRESIDENT YOU SUPPORT THESE STEPS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

So, we need your help. Send a letter to the president today!

-The Earth Day Network Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Weekly Address

06/23/2013 Nativegrl77

Time for Congress to Pass Commonsense Immigration Reform

President Obama discusses the bipartisan legislation in the United States Senate that would take important steps towards fixing our broken immigration system, while growing our economy and reducing the deficit.

Watch this week’s Weekly Address.

Watch the West Wing Week here.

Indiana Fever: The 2012 WNBA champion Indiana Fever was in Washington, D.C., on Friday to visit the White House. President Obama congratulated the team on their winning season and thanked them for their service to communities across the country.

Father’s Day: President Obama celebrated an early Father’s Day last Friday with high school students from Chicago’s Becoming a Man program. During a lunch in the East Room of the White House, the President spoke of the importance of fatherhood and mentorship. President Obama met with students in the program, which is based in low-income public schools, earlier this year to reaffirm the importance of education.

Moving Toward Peace: After crossing the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night, President Obama spoke to the people of Northern Ireland from the Belfast waterfront on Monday, praising them for their efforts toward peace and encouraging them to continue to persist.

“From the start, no one was naïve enough to believe that peace would be anything but a long journey. Yeats once wrote ‘Peace comes dropping slow.’ But that doesn’t mean our efforts to forge a real and lasting peace should come dropping slow. This work is as urgent now as it has ever been, because there’s more to lose now than there has ever been.”

Trade Agreement: President Obama met with leaders from the European Union on Tuesday to discuss the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Together with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, President Obama announced that the EU and the U.S. will begin negotiations on the trade agreement next month. The agreement will increase economic growth in the United States and the European Union.

“[T]he U.S.-EU relationship is the largest in the world. It makes up nearly half of global GDP. We trade about $1 trillion in goods and services each year. We invest nearly $4 trillion in each other’s economies. And all that supports around 13 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. And this potentially groundbreaking partnership would deepen those ties. It would increase exports, decrease barriers to trade and investment. As part of broader growth strategies in both our economies, it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the ocean.”

G-8 Summit: On Tuesday, President Obama joined leaders from all over the world in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland for this year’s G-8 Summit. During plenary sessions, the President and the other G-8 leaders discussed the global economy and President Obama announced increased humanitarian assistance for Syria. The President also held meetings with President Vladmir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President François Hollande of France, Prime Minister Enrico Letta of Italy and Prime Minister Ali Zeidan of Libya.

German Ties: The people of Berlin gathered on the east side of the Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday, almost 50 years after President Kennedy spoke to the Cold War-divided city, to hear President Obama speak about the strong bond between Germany and the United States.

In his speech, President Obama announced new measurements to reduce our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third. He also praised the Germans for their progress since the fall of the Berlin Wall, he acknowledged that the struggle for freedom, security, and human dignity still persists.

“When Europe and America lead with our hopes instead of our fears, we do things that no other nations can do, no other nations will do. So we have to lift up our eyes today and consider the day of peace with justice that our generation wants for this world.”