Tag Archives: republicans

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

The Gulf Coast


Yesterday, I visited Caminada Bay in Grand Isle, Louisiana — one of the first places to feel the devastation wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While I was here, at Camerdelle’s Live Bait shop, I met with a group of local residents and small business owners.

Folks like Floyd Lasseigne, a fourth-generation oyster fisherman. This is the time of year when he ordinarily earns a lot of his income. But his oyster bed has likely been destroyed by the spill.

Terry Vegas had a similar story. He quit the 8th grade to become a shrimper with his grandfather. Ever since, he’s earned his living during shrimping season — working long, grueling days so that he could earn enough money to support himself year-round. But today, the waters where he has worked are closed. And every day, as the spill worsens, he loses hope that he will be able to return to the life he built.

Here, this spill has not just damaged livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching recognition that this time their lives may never be the same.

These people work hard. They meet their responsibilities. But now because of a manmade catastrophe — one that is not their fault and beyond their control — their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It is brutally unfair. And what I told these men and women is that I will stand with the people of the Gulf Coast until they are again made whole.

That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis. Today, there are more than 20,000 people working around the clock to contain and clean up this spill. I have authorized 17,500 National Guard troops to participate in the response. More than 1,900 vessels are aiding in the containment and cleanup effort. We have convened hundreds of top scientists and engineers from around the world. This is the largest response to an environmental disaster of this kind in the history of our country.

We have also ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so far. In addition, after an emergency safety review, we are putting in place aggressive new operating standards for offshore drilling. And I have appointed a bipartisan commission to look into the causes of this spill. If laws are inadequate, they will be changed. If oversight was lacking, it will be strengthened. And if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.

These are hard times in Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast, an area that has already seen more than its fair share of troubles. The people of this region have met this terrible catastrophe with seemingly boundless strength and character in defense of their way of life. What we owe them is a commitment by our nation to match the resilience they have shown. That is our mission. And it is one we will fulfill.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell


President Obama has pledged to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And the House passed a bill last week that would make good on this promise.

But there is real opposition in the Senate — and some Republicans are vowing to do whatever it takes to block a vote. The only way to get them to back down is to speak up.

I just added my name to the growing list of Americans in support of repealing this discriminatory law.

Will you join me?

http://my.barackobama.com/RepealDADT-share

Thanks!

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Arizona Elementary School Will Whiten The Faces Of Its Own Students On A Mural Because Some Racists Yelled At It


Via Ken Layne at Wonkette, this is just the worst story in the world:

Mural

An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students to be changed to Caucasian skin.

F’ing hell. Read the rest of the details here. And here’s Richard Lawson’s reaction, at Gawker.

What can I say about this? We are talking about a bunch of mentally deranged adults, who have terrorized an elementary school, for daring to paint a mural featuring the faces of black and Latino children — actual black and Latino children who live in Arizona. And we’re also talking about a group of adults who have decided to send a stirring message to their students and the world: when a bunch of mentally deranged adults — and we are not talking about people who are particularly threatening, this is a bunch of utterly gutless mopes, yelling racial slurs from their cars, egged on by some pinhead city councilman cowering behind a radio microphone — threaten a bunch of children, the best thing to do is to accede to their psychotic, racist “demands.”

Seriously, educators of Prescott, Arizona, when some creep demands you whiten the faces of your own students on a mural, the correct response is to say, “No, we will not be doing anything of the sort.”

This story really should be blasted, far and wide. You cable news producers need to get this story in the mix with a quickness. And let me be clear to you all: there are no “two sides to this story.” This is not something you need to have a panel discussion about. CNN, I don’t want to see you plumbing the depths of your counterintuition on your website, or lending credence to the notion that the gutless mopes in their cars, shrieking racial slurs at the images of children have an interesting point of view that we should “hear out” because of the need to be “balanced.” This is your moment to decry, condemn, and brutalize these evil people.

Blast them to hell, or go jump in the Gulf of Mexico.

RELATED:
Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students’ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White [Wonkette]

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

ThinkProgress.org


UNDER THE RADAR

JUSTICE — PRESIDENT OBAMA DIRECTS FEDERAL AGENCIES TO EXTEND BENEFITS TO EMPLOYEES’ SAME-SEX PARTNERS: Last June, President Obama ordered each federal agency to conduct a thorough review of employee benefits to identify any that can be extended to LGBT employees under existing law. Yesterday, the President released a memorandum announcing that the agencies “have identified a number of benefits,” and they should provide them “to their employees’ same-sex domestic partners [and their children] as permitted by law.” The benefits extension includes credit union membership, hardship transfers, counseling services, family assistance services, access to medical treatment, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance. Also as a result of Obama’s June 2009 order, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Tuesday that partners of gay and lesbian federal employees, U.S. Postal Service workers, and federal retirees can start applying next month for long-term health-care insurance. “For far too long, many of our Government’s hard-working, dedicated LGBT employees have been denied equal access to the basic rights and benefits their colleagues enjoy,” Obama said in yesterday’s memo. “This kind of systemic inequality undermines the health, well-being, and security not just of our Federal workforce, but also of their families and communities.” The President also urged Congress to pass the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, which would extend the full range of benefits currently enjoyed by Federal employees’ opposite-sex spouses to those of the same-sex.