Motley Moose – Archive

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings diaries give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

The President’s Weekly Address post is also an Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the Vice President laid out his and the President’s plan to make two years of community college free for responsible students.

Access to higher education has a tangible impact on a student’s success: Those with an associate’s degree earn 25% more than folks who graduated high school, and those with a four-year degree make 70% more. Not only that, but a better educated citizenry is necessary to ensure that the United States continues to out-compete the rest of the world.

Making two years of community college free is good for workers, good for companies, and good for our economy. And this proposal is part of the President’s broader vision for middle-class economics: that everybody who works hard deserves their fair shot and the chance to get ahead.

President Obama traveled to Jamaica on Thursday and part of his visit included a trip to the Bob Marley Museum.

Barack and Jamrock

Jamaican smiles all around!

Oh, and he was also in Jamaica to launch his Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) to expand opportunities for emerging entrepreneurs and civil society activists. From a Town Hall:

Transcript below the fold.

From the White House, “Our Endangered Climate”:

On Monday, President Obama issued a Presidential Proclamation declaring this week, April 6-12, 2015, as National Public Health Week.

As part of the effort to support public health with a sense of purpose and determination, the Obama administration has focused on how climate change affects our environment. Our public health is deeply tied to the health of our environment. As the planet warms, we face new threats to our health and well-being, and the President is taking steps to counteract those threats.

Tuesday, President Obama spoke at Howard University Medical School in Washington, D.C., joined by the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murphy, and Gina McCarthy, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, at a roundtable. The President explained what the Administration has already done to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon dioxide that are contributing to climate change, and discussed ways to prepare our communities for the impacts that cannot be avoided.

President Barack Obama gives remarks to the press during a roundtable discussion on climate change and public health at the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., April 7, 2015

In keeping with the President’s directive to make government as open as possible, as well as his commitment to combating climate change, the Administration also announced this morning that it’s expanding its Climate Data Initiative to include more than 150 health-relevant datasets on climate.data.gov.

Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings diaries give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

The President’s Weekly Address post is also an Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the President described the historic understanding the United States — with our allies and partners — reached with Iran, which, if fully implemented, will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and will make our country, our allies, and our world safer. The deal, announced on Thursday, meets our core objectives of cutting off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon.

It is both comprehensive and long-term, and includes robust and intrusive inspections of the country’s nuclear program. The President reiterated that the deal is not yet done — and if there is backsliding from Iran in the months to come, there will be no deal. He echoed his belief that a diplomatic resolution is by far the best option, and promised to continue to fully brief Congress and the American people on the substance and progress of the negotiations in the months to come.

From the Rose Garden – President Obama on the International Nuclear Framework with Iran:

President Obama:

This framework would cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran will face strict limitations on its program, and Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history. So this deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.

… if we can get this done and Iran follows through on the framework that our negotiators agreed to, we will be able to resolve one of the greatest threats to our security and to do so peacefully.

A reminder to Congress and perhaps the 2016 GOP presidential field:

So when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East? Is it worse than doing what we’ve done for almost two decades with Iran moving forward with its nuclear program and without robust inspections?

… the issues at stake here are bigger than politics. These are matters of war and peace.

… this is not simply a deal between my administration and Iran. This is a deal between Iran, the United States of America and the major powers in the world, including some of our closest allies. If Congress kills this deal not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative, then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy. International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.

Republican Primary voters, March 26 through March 31st (PDF):

– Scott Walker 20% (down from 25%)

– Jeb Bush 17% (steady)

– Ted Cruz 16% (up from 5%)

– Ben Carson and Rand Paul 10%

– Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee 6%

– Chris Christie 4%

– Rick Perry 3%

From PPP:

Cruz has really caught fire with voters identifying themselves as ‘very conservative’ since his announcement. After polling at only 11% with them a month ago, he now leads the GOP field with 33% to 25% for Walker and 12% for Carson with no one else in double digits.

Now that the “severely conservative” wing of the party has a standard bearer, the 2016 nominating contest is starting to shape up as a race between the establishment, the true believers, and those who have not yet figured out that when Scott Walker says “you don’t have to move to the center to win the center” he means that he lies to the center to get them to vote for him. The Wall Street Journal is making it their business to point out every Walker flip-and-flop because Jeb(!).

From Ed Kilgore:

We’ll soon see if Carson or Huckabee can get some of this support back, or if it’s leeched away by Scott Walker, or if Rick Perry or Bobby Jindal or Rick Santorum or some combination of them can poach on it with their own announcement events. All I’ll say at this point is that it sure looks like a different nominating contest dynamic with someone clearly on top of the hard-core conservative pile than without it. A more divided right-wing vote keeps Jeb Bush at or near the top.

As the Republican Party moves further and further away from the mainstream, with their anti-immigration, anti-gay agenda, Ted Cruz will become the face of the Republican Party. Purdy, ain’t it?

More …

I sat down at my keyboard this morning ready to write about the 2016 presidential election, this time to weigh in on the Democratic Party’s nominating contest. I had read a troubling interview, from the Sunday morning talk shows, given by one of the not-quite-announced Democratic candidates and it reminded me of how important it is to keep our eye on the big picture.

After scanning my news feed, I found that I didn’t have to start from scratch because Michael Tomasky, in an article in the 150th Anniversary Edition of The Nation, had already made many of my points for me. His piece, snarkily titled “Lesser-Evilism We Can Believe In” included a sub-heading that asks this important question: “Should we put government in the hands of a party determined to subvert it, or a party – however flawed – that believes it still has a role to play in securing the common good?”

(p.s. I chose the latter)

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings diaries give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.