Motley Moose – Archive

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 linkhere]

blurb from blog

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

From the White House –

In this week’s address, the President highlighted the important differences between the budget he’s put forward – built on opportunity for all – and the budget House Republicans are advocating for, which stacks the deck against the middle class.

While the President is focused on building lasting economic security and ensuring that hard-working Americans have the opportunity to get ahead, Republicans are advancing the same old top-down approach of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and slashing important investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development.

From the Rose Garden, Tuesday, April 1, 2014:

Email blast “7.1 million Americans”:

… Now, millions of our fellow Americans have the comfort and peace of mind that comes with knowing they’re no longer leaving their health and well-being to chance. For many of them, quality health insurance wasn’t an option until this year — maybe because they couldn’t afford it, or because a pre-existing condition kept them locked out of a discriminatory system.

Today, that’s changed. And while our long-broken health care system may not be completely fixed, it’s without question a lot better. That’s something to be proud of — and there’s no good reason to go back.

Regardless of your politics, or your feelings about the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans with health coverage is something that’s good for our economy and our country.

At the end of the day, that is what this law — and the other reforms we’re fighting for, from a 21st-century immigration system to a fairer wage for every American who’s willing to work for it — are all about:

Making sure our country lives up to our highest ideals.

I am thankful to be your President today, and every day. And I am proud that this law will continue to make life better for millions of Americans in the years to come

President Obama spoke to the youth of Europe at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium.

President Barack Obama:

Your Majesties, Mr. Prime Minister, and the people of Belgium — on behalf of the American people, we are grateful for your friendship.  We stand together as inseparable allies, and I thank you for your wonderful hospitality.  I have to admit it is easy to love a country famous for chocolate and beer. […]

Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve inevitable conflicts between states.  And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle — through war and Enlightenment, repression and revolution — that a particular set of ideals began to emerge:  The belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose.  The belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed, and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.  And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men — and women — are created equal.[…]

So I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation. […]

There will always be voices who say that what happens in the wider world is not our concern, nor our responsibility.  But we must never forget that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom.  Our democracy, our individual opportunity only exists because those who came before us had the wisdom and the courage to recognize that our ideals will only endure if we see our self-interest in the success of other peoples and other nations. […]

To be honest, if we defined our interests narrowly, if we applied a cold-hearted calculus, we might decide to look the other way. Our economy is not deeply integrated with Ukraine’s. Our people and our homeland face no direct threat from the invasion of Crimea.  Our own borders are not threatened by Russia’s annexation.  But that kind of casual indifference would ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent.  It would allow the old way of doing things to regain a foothold in this young century. And that message would be heard not just in Europe, but in Asia and the Americas, in Africa and the Middle East. […]

In the end, the success of our ideals comes down to us — including the example of our own lives, our own societies.  We know that there will always be intolerance.  But instead of fearing the immigrant, we can welcome him.  We can insist on policies that benefit the many, not just the few; that an age of globalization and dizzying change opens the door of opportunity to the marginalized, and not just a privileged few.

Full transcript below the fold …

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. For over 60 years, Democrats had been trying to pass a law that finally and firmly declared that health care was a right and not a privilege.

This historic piece of legislation was possible because we had Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democratic president.

It is why Elections Matter … and why all the rest is noise.

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

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama highlights the importance of making sure our economy rewards the hard work of every American – including America’s women.

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

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama highlighted the action he took this week to reward hard work by strengthening overtime pay protections. As part of this year of action, the President has ordered the Secretary of Labor to modernize our country’s overtime rules to ensure that millions of American workers are paid a fair wage for a hard day’s work.

While our economy is moving forward, the middle class and those fighting to get into it are still struggling and too many Americans are working harder than ever just to keep up, let alone get ahead. So, in consultation with workers and business, the Obama administration will update and simplify the rules to reward hard work and responsibility.

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

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama highlighted the momentum building across the country to give Americans a raise and reiterated his call for Congress to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. The President has already signed an executive order to raise the minimum wage for people working under new federal contracts. Companies large and small are choosing to give workers a raise because they know it’s good business. And Governors across the country are answering the President’s call by working to raise their states’ minimum wages. Now, it’s time for Congress to get the job done and restore opportunity for all Americans by raising the minimum wage to “ten-ten.”

Michele Bachmann’s words about the Jewish-American community selling out Israel simply because we strongly support President Obama and the Democratic Party do nothing less than encourage one of the oldest, and most dangerous, anti-Semitic memes – that of dual loyalty.

Of Jewish support for President Obama, Bachmann said:

The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, forty-eight Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the Democrat [sic] senators in the US Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran. This is clearly against Israel’s best interest. What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who it appears have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel.

This is nothing more than Congresswoman Bachmann telling us that our primary loyalty should be to Israel because we are Jews and Israel is the Jewish State and that we should vote accordingly.  Bachmann is not the first Republican to engage in such behavior and she will certainly not be the last as Republicans have long tried to use this as a wedge issue to win more Jewish votes; a plan that heretofore has failed miserably, as we remain one of the most reliably liberal and Democratic groups out there.

The fostering of this perception, however, is very dangerous to the Jewish community.  It encourages people to treat us as outsiders.  After all, if we’re not completely American because we all have this dual loyalty, then we shouldn’t be treated as full Americans many would then proceed to argue.  Our loyalty would become suspect and the haven, and home, that America has been to us would disappear.

My great-grandparents fled Latvia and Poland so that they could escape the pogroms and the violence and the systematic oppression from the government.  Encourage dual loyalty on our parts, and then create that perception in the minds of our fellow Americans, and all that nastiness could quickly come back.  None of this, however, comes to mind to these Republicans because they don’t really care so much about Jewish-Americans or the safety and welfare of Jews in general.

In the end, Jewish safety and welfare is completely irrelevant to Bachmann because we’re just pawns in her desire to see the realization of the end times postulated in the Book of Revelation.  That is what Bachmann and her ilk are concerned with.  We are only here to help bring about the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world.  While it is not hatred of the Jews that we have seen in other corners of the world, it is certainly not love for the Jews that we see here.

What Bachmann, in her apocalyptic fervor fails to understand is that Jewish-Americans do not wish to be part of her schemes.  We vote on the issues that are most important to us.  All one needs to do is look at the various social and economic issues.  On pretty much each and every one of them the overwhelming majority of Jews come down on the liberal side.  That is why every Democratic presidential candidate has won the Jewish vote for nearly 90 years running.

Congresswoman Bachmann, I think I can speak for the vast majority of Jewish-Americans when I say I can’t wait until you’re back home in Minnesota for good at the conclusion of this Congress.

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

From the White House – Weekly Address

In his weekly address, President Obama said he took action this week to launch new manufacturing hubs and expand a competition to fund transformative infrastructure projects. Both are policies aimed at expanding economic opportunity for all by creating jobs and ensuring the long-term strength of the American economy. Congress can boost this effort by passing a bipartisan proposal to create a nationwide network of high-tech manufacturing hubs and taking steps to invest in our nation’s infrastructure – rebuilding our transportation system, creating new construction jobs, and better connecting Americans to economic opportunities.