Tag Archives: health care

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Matthew Wrote, and the President Responded:


The President has always made it a habit to read 10 letters from the American public a day. Matthew was one of these letter-writers, and he got a response.

A varsity basketball player from South Central Los Angeles, Matthew and his teammates noticed that neighboring schools had far more school supplies, nicer buildings, and even technology such as iPads in classrooms. Matthew asked the President to give all students a chance to succeed — promising that he and his peers would do their part in school.

The President wrote back, letting Matthew know that his generation deserves an education system that lets them dream as big as they can, and told him he’s fighting for the necessary investments every day.

Read both letters and learn how President Obama is working to help all of America’s students succeed.

 

President Obama responds to a letter writer.

The First Lady’s Travel Journal: A Journey That Began Decades Ago

The First Lady departs the White House today en route to Japan and Cambodia for a week-long trip centered around her new Let Girls Learn initiative. For the First Lady, this visit is part of a journey that began decades ago — a journey focused on education, equality, and empowerment. Join the First Lady’s trip by using social media and learn more about how Let Girls Learn will help the 62 million girls worldwide who are not in school.

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What They’re Saying: People From Across the Country Call on America to Lead on Trade

Voices from across the country — and from across the aisle — have expressed support for President Obama’s trade deal. His trade proposal gives us the greatest opportunity to level the playing field for American businesses and their employees, ensures the rights of workers around the world, protects endangered species and the environment, preserves a free and open Internet, and would hold our trading partners accountable.

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President Obama’s Trip to Phoenix: Visiting Veterans in Arizona

On Friday, President Obama traveled to Gilbert, AZ to pay a surprise visit to the new home of Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg. This was the final stop in the President’s day-long trip, which began with a visit to the Phoenix VA medical facility and a roundtable discussion to hear about the progress we’ve made to improve the VA’s ability to serve our veterans.

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~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Vets and Pay equality … VoteVets.org


www.votevets.orgWhen we were commissioned in the United States Army over forty years ago, pay equality was not an issue. Both of us were paid the same $450 a month paycheck we all received as no time in grade Second Lieutenants.

Pay was published in multiple formats and every soldier knew what America paid its men and women with zero discrimination for the youngest Private or Lieutenant to the oldest Command Sergeant Major or General.

But when our Soldiers leave the Army and enter the civilian workforce, life changes. And it changes more for our female veterans than for our males. Women on average receive about 25% less for equal work than their male counterpart.

We need your help fixing that.

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), one of our great Senators, introduced S.84 – Paycheck Fairness Act on 23 January, 2013. In short, this act gets after the pay challenge for all American women, and our Veterans. It further goes after bosses who retaliate against employees who reveal their salaries to colleagues in an effort to produce the transparency in the civilian world that works so well in our Armed Forces.

But on multiple votes, the GOP has defeated the passage of this bill.

For that reason, VoteVets requests your support for Senator Mikulski’s Paycheck Fairness Act. Add your name to our petition in support of this important legislation.

Thank you very much for reading. After you’ve sounded off on this issue, please share this email with your family and friends.

We’ll be in touch as the legislation moves forward.

All the best,

Major General (Ret) Paul Eaton & P.J. Eaton
VoteVets.org

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Aziz Ansari: Live at Madison Square Garden – Thanks Mom and Dad


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Petite Noir … “The Fall” & “The King of Anxiety”


A Spare, Minimalist R&B Video Influenced by Marina Abramovic

 

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/petite-noir-music-video-the-fall/

 

Culture

By

March 10, 2015 1:30 pm

The video for “The Fall,” by the musician Petite Noir, whose EP “The King of Anxiety” is out now.
 It’s been two and a half years since the debut single “Till We Ghosts” introduced the world to the crooning, beat-heavy brand of indie rock proffered by the Belgian-born, Cape Town-raised, London-based musician Yannick Ilunga, who records as Petite Noir. Since then, he’s collaborated with Mos Def, signed with the U.K. label Domino, opened for Solange and been featured on her “Saint Heron” compilation album. But Ilunga would tell you his most notable achievement to date is coining the term “Noirwave,” a new, ideologically influenced artistic genre that identifies as African first, and everything else second. “The term ‘African music’ is so overused,” Ilunga says, “to the point that when some people say it, it just sounds cheesy. Noirwave was always meant to include clothing, art, photography, music obviously — all types of things. It’s taking the Africa that we know, turning it upside down and bringing people a new black. Solange is super Noirwave. So is Beyoncé. Noirwave is pop culture — it’s coming, but right now it’s just boiling.”

The same could be said of Ilunga himself, who recently released a debut five-track EP called “The King of Anxiety” (“a book of secrets,” as he calls it), a buzzy taste of the full-length album that will drop later this year. Having moved from Brussels to Cape Town at the age of 3, Ilunga grew up eschewing pop and traditional African music in favor of metal, rock, punk and electronica, as well as “whatever my brothers and sisters were listening to, whatever was trendy.” He counts all these genres as influences on Petite Noir, but notes that discovering Kanye West’s album “808s & Heartbreak” was the single defining moment of his musical education. “He was a black guy doing whatever he wanted to do, and he was of my time,” Ilunga says. “Of course, people like Michael Jackson were big influences, but when I started listening to them, they weren’t so big. Kanye was relevant.”

A standout on “The King of Anxiety” is “The Fall,” a pensive, meditative ode to the inescapable changes wrought by time, with a quietly anthemic refrain and minimalist orchestration that might call the XX to mind. Ilunga and his girlfriend, Rochelle Nembhard, directed the video for the track, a series of intimate moments shot in a film-noir palette; they star in it together, too. Ilunga and Nembhard face each other, sometimes gazing at each other with deep affection, other times slapping each other repeatedly in the face or playing the knife game. “The video is based on my real relationship, but it’s overexaggerated,” Ilunga says, adding that the video was inspired by “The Artist Is Present,” Marina Abramovic’s 2010 MoMA performance. “The first video we shot looked more like a timeline, and we scrapped that,” Ilunga says. “This video shows what a relationship in general is: our attempt to lose selfness and achieve unity. When we fall, we fall together.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Seuss on the loose in San Diego


By Chris Erskine contact the reporter

he San Diego History Museum is staging an exhibition dedicated to the art of Dr. Seuss, March 25 to April 19, at the museum in Balboa Park.

Titled “Ingenious! The World of Dr. Seuss,” the show will look at the breadth of Theodor Geisel’s artistic legacy, and will focus on seldom-seen images and artworks he did across nearly eight decades. Some of it celebrates iconic San Diego locations, such as the Hotel del Coronado.