Posts Tagged President Obama
Surgeon General’s Warning
Posted by zoboxrox in health, politics, powerful women, science on July 14th, 2009
Yesterday Obama nominated Dr. Regina Benjamin of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, to be his new Surgeon General, and while the position is more or less a symbolic one, his choice highlights his thoughts on the nations health, and perhaps the direction he hopes to take the entire health care system.
Whats interesting, and at the same time predictable, about his choice, is that here is a woman of color who comes out of the same meritocratic system as the President himself (as well as his choice for the Supreme Court). In this way, unlike someone who came from privilege and never needed any help, Dr. Benjamin feels she owes the system, and has dedicated her life to helping others — NOT to cashing in on her skills and experience. In fact, the New York Times quotes her current employer as saying they are currently $300,000.00 in debt to her, because she hasn’t received payment for years.
Mr. Obama’s signature domestic policy goal is reforming the nation’s health care system to make doctors more accessible to the tens of millions of people without insurance. He picked someone who has spent her entire career tending to the poor and the uninsured, sometimes accepting pints of oysters as payment.
It was Dr. Benjamin’s willingness to sacrifice — something health care reform may ask of many more doctors — that Mr. Obama discussed at length Monday.
Dr. Benjamin, Mr. Obama said, “represents what’s best about health care in America — doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients.”
On top of her qualifications as a doctor and an advocate for the poor and uninsured, she also comes from the land of disaster AKA the Gulf Coast (perhaps most memorably Hurricane Katrina), and has a lot of experience with emergency health situations — an incredible tool for the job of Surgeon General. Her own clinic in Bayou La Batre, which she built in a shrimping town 25 miles south of Mobile, Alabama, has been destroyed and rebuilt three times, twice due to hurricanes, and once to fire. 
She has an intimate knowledge of tragedy and early loss, as she has been personally affected by what she considers, “preventable diseases”: her mother’s death from lung cancer due to smoking, her father’s death from high blood pressure and diabetes due to diet, and finally her brother’s death from HIV due to lifestyle. In other words, she understands what’s killing Americans — its happened right in front of her eyes, both in her home, and in the clinic where she serves thousands of people, sometimes at cost to herself.
Here are some awesome facts about her from her Wikipedia page:
- In 1998 she was the United States recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights
- Dr. Benjamin was named by Time Magazine as one of the “Nation’s 50 Future Leaders Age 40 and Under.” She has been featured in a New York Times article, “Angel in a White Coat,” and was chosen “Person of the Week” by ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, “Woman of the Year” by CBS This Morning, and “Woman of the Year” by People Magazine. She was also featured on the December 1999 cover of Clarity Magazine and received the 2000 National Caring Award, which was inspired by Mother Teresa.
- In 2006, she was awarded the papal cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice by Pope Benedict XVI.
- In 2008, Benjamin was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report.
- In September, she was one of 25 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards,” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
While You Were Mourning…
Posted by zoboxrox in environment, health, international, malfunction, miracle, not news, politics, religion, science, tragedy on July 2nd, 2009
So my favorite eatery has captioned CNN on their television at all times (hence, my favorite) and while the 24/7 media channel has a tendency to be a little hokey, perhaps overblown, and often downright dramatic (but no news is good news right?), I respect them simply for the fact that they are huge enough to sink their perfectly manicured, yet often clumsy, claws into most every major news item au current. I can’t help myself, then, from feeling majorly disappointed that this generally satisfactory and overly accessible outlet for information is, at this very moment, reporting “BREAKING NEWS: VIDEO OF MICHAEL JACKSON’S FINAL REHEARSAL RELEASED.” (Here it is if you’re curious… entertaining, but not news)
I have to ask myself, is this really breaking news? And don’t get me wrong, I love MJ. I was a die hard Jackson fan even when it was embarrassing to admit. My list of favorite songs include some of the lesser known, deeper felt (”She’s Out of My Life” now has a whole new meaning), and I’m proud to say that while its not a consistent ability, I have successfully moonwalked on occasion. BUT — before I am a Michael Jackson fan, I am a citizen of the world, and my deeper concern lies in what has happened in the week since his untimely passing. So here is the list of Top 5 News Events that occurred while you were mourning:
1. Lets start with the ridiculously important act by the House last Friday, June 26, which, after years of ignoring the inconvenient truth, passed H.R. 2454, or The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. While the act itself is far (far far far far) from perfect, and in truth it dragged itself across the finish line at the last second, winning by only seven votes, it is hugely significant because it is the first time Congress has formally recognized what every other thinking American knows as Global Warming, Climate Change, the Greenhouse Effect (remember that one?), the End of the World, etc:
The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.
President Obama hailed the House passage of the bill as “a bold and necessary step.” He said in a statement that he looked forward to Senate action that would send a bill to his desk “so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront America’s energy challenge and reclaim America’s future.”
But I bet a lot of people didn’t hear about this. After all, we’d only had a day since Michael’s passing. Who cares about… you know, the world…?
2. Two days later, on Sunday June 28th, a little place called Honduras, you may have heard of it, its part of our continent, went ahead and had themselves a coup. 
Back story is as follows: Left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya (think Chavez, with a mustache) was pushing for legislative reform which would allow him to lift the term restrictions for presidents, enabling him to run again (think Mayor Bloomberg, without the cash). Apparently the military found this completely unacceptable, and in the middle of the night, took over the government and exiled Zelaya to Costa Rica (actually, that sounds pretty nice).
In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.
Mr. Zelaya, a leftist aligned with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, angrily denounced the coup as illegal. “I am the president of Honduras,” he insisted at the airport in San José, Costa Rica, still wearing his pajamas….
Church services were canceled and most people stayed home. Several thousand protesters supporting the president faced off against soldiers outside the presidential palace, burning tires.
The government television station and a television station that supports the president were taken off the air. Television and radio stations broadcast no news. Only wealthy Hondurans with access to the Internet and cable television were able to follow the day’s events.
Normally a coup would be pretty big news — HUGE. Remember in Pretty Woman when she goes back into the store to tell them what a mistake they’ve made by not letting her shop — HUGE MISTAKE — well this is huge the way that was.
3. Another two days later, in the early morning of Tuesday June 30, a passenger plane, an Airbus 310 to be exact, carrying 153 people, crashed on its way from Yemen to the Comoros Islands. 
While normally this would be an instant global tragedy for the world to rubberneck, the story becomes even more unbelievable, as a sole survivor, a 14 year old girl who can barely swim, is rescued, found floating in the Indian Ocean. The young woman, Bahia Bakari, was traveling with her mother and three siblings, all of whom are believed to be dead, and cannot explain how it is she managed to stay alive.
A severely bruised young girl believed to be the only survivor of an Indian Ocean p
lane crash flew back Thursday to Paris, where she was embraced gently by her father, who tried to lift her spirits with a joke.
Bahia Bakari, 12, returned to France from the Comoros Islands on a French government plane. The Falcon-900 jet with medical facilities left the archipelago nation, a former French colony, and arrived at Le Bourget airport just north of Paris…
Bahia, described by her father as a fragile girl who could barely swim, spent over 13 hours in the water clinging to wreckage before she was rescued. She was found suffering from hypothermia, a fractured collarbone and widespread bruises to her face, elbow and foot….
“In the midst of the mourning, there is Bahia. It is a miracle, it is an absolutely extraordinary battle for survival,” France’s cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, who flew back with her, said at the airport. “It’s an enormous message that she sends to the world … almost nothing is impossible.”
And yet, there are people who don’t even know this story, haven’t even heard of Bahia, because Michael Jackson died last week, and there’s only so much room for misery in one’s life.
4. Later that very same day, Al Franken defeated Norm Coleman in the final battle of the war for the Minnesota Senate Seat.
Apparently Coleman had to dip into his dental fund to continue the lawsuit, and when pressed with the idea that he may be required to shell out even more cash, decided to call it quits, like a true conservative. Obama now has 60 friends in the Senate. He can basically do anything he wants. Even Bush never had it this good. And while I’m sure people know this happened, no one really seems to care. All of the passion Americans have put into politics over the past year, seems to have died with MJ.
5. Finally, the people of Iran continued to struggle for basic human rights, like freedom, and fairness, and safety. They continued to protest, continued to recieve beatings, continued to be kidnapped, murdered, or worst of all, disappeared. They continued to document their troubles as well, but couldn’t post the images online, their main resource at this time, because the inernet had basically crashed with Michael Jackson frenzy.
So here’s a little video someone put up on YouTube to remind us all, its not over, its only just begun.
(Amanda — don’t watch this)
Why You Wanna Break My Heart?
Posted by zoboxrox in church and state, human rights, justice, malfunction, politics, tragedy on June 16th, 2009
I realize I haven’t been completely objective (not that I ever claimed to be), and for a while there, I was a member of the Obama cheer-leading squad, but I’ve got to say, for me at least, the honeymoon is now officially over. Its not that I expected the new administration to do everything right, especially considering the seemingly insurmountable trouble they are faced with; its just, I never thought they would do something so clearly wrong.
To be fair, lets give a little context.
The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA as it is known, was a bill signed into law by President Clinton – NOT President Bush — on September 21, 1996. It basically says that no state can be forced to recognize other state’s same-sex marriages and that the federal government is required not to. So yeah, its pretty bad.
No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife
Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, a gay couple who were married in California before Proposition 8 and had taken the two bans on marriage to Federal Court, were fought by the Obama Administration’s Justice Department. While it is rare for an administration not to defend the current laws (though not unheard of), whether or not they agree with them, it makes matters worse that Justice Department has written a brief which makes arguments comparing gay marriage to incestuous relationships.
The brief insists it is reasonable for states to favor heterosexual marriages because they are the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.” In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, the Justice Department cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece.
This is not a direction I expected this president to go in. For someone who travels the globe, preaching tolerance and understanding, he should make more of an effort to practice it at home.
Say It Ain’t Sonia
Posted by zoboxrox in justice, politics, powerful women on May 26th, 2009
If you had asked me a month ago who the next Supreme would be, I would have said Sonia Sotomayor, without question. She was afterall, the only candidate offered who fulfilled both the need for an additional female to the highest court and the strong desire for a Hispanic justice. There is no question on whether or not she is qualified: having attended Princeton University and Yale Law; having worked as a prosecutor for the New York District Attorney and a partner at the private commercial litigation firm of Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation; having been appointed a federal judge by a republican, Bush Sr., in 1991 to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then in 1997 receiving a nomination from a democrat, Clinton (William), to the seat she now holds as a jurist in the elite U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In other words, she fit the job requirements.
Its just… she was so obvious. In a world of safe choices, Obama has made a number of relatively risky ones (Biden, Geithner) and he never seemed to be intimidated by the status quo into doing the obvious. I just assumed he would completely surprise us. But the more I think about Sotomayor the less obvious she becomes. I’m a born and bred New York City gal and I can tell you from personal experience, there’s nothing ordinary or boring about a strong Latina from the South Bronx.
Additionally, she is considered a moderate liberal, and while she’s not exactly an activist, appointing her to the Supreme Court won’t cause the shake-up her predecessor, the wonderfully strange and suprising David Souter, did when he failed to appease the Right after his nomination by Bush (41).
She is liberal…..Liberal without being a flaming type of do-gooder or anything of the sort. To call her a centrist would not be accurate. To call her wild-eyed would also not be accurate. She is far too rational, far too interested in the underlying facts.
So in this way, while she’s safe for Obama to nominate politically, as she fills the double need for a Hispanic and a woman, she is also safe for progessive causes, such a gay marriage and equal rights, and thereby satisfies his base as well. She is strengthened by the fact that she is completely qualified and also socially necessary. Unless they want to lose the Hispanic and female vote completely, the GOP will have a hard time rejecting her nomination.
In a move that seemed so simple and obvious at first, Obama has once again displayed his cunning and savy political mind.
Happy Earth Day
Posted by zoboxrox in environment, health, politics, science on April 22nd, 2009
Even though we should be aware of the environment everyday, considering, you know, its all around us, we still choose but one day a the year to come together and celebrate it. So every Earth Day thousands of first graders go out and plant a tree or set a butterfly loose. This year Barack Obama did a little bit more.
President Obama marked Earth Day Wednesday by announcing a new initiative to lease federal waters for the purpose of generating electricity from wind and ocean currents.
The president announced the initiative, to be administered by the Interior Department, while reiterating his pledge to push for a comprehensive energy plan that encourages the development of alternative fuel sources, cuts dependence on foreign oil, addresses climate change, and creates new jobs.
Wind power can generate 20 percent of the country’s electricity by 2030 and support 250,000 jobs…
Now, while it annoys me that we judge whether or not to pursue a more environmental road by how costly or job creative it is (in the end, none of that will matter), I suppose it needs to be stressed considering this rather shocking study by Rasmussen.
Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of all Americans believe global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, with 33% who say it’s Very Serious. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s a not a serious problem.
Half (49%) of Americans think the president believes climate change is caused primarily by human activity. This is the first time that belief has fallen below 50% since the president took office. 19% say Obama attributes global warming to long-term planetary trends.
Glacier in Patagonia, Argentina 1928 & 2004. Photo: Greenpeace
That shirt that reads “mankind” should probably just read “Americans.” Our inability to take blame, or even responsibility, for anything is remarkable. As is our tendency to ignore and forget. So as a result, our president must take the steps for us, even if the majority of us don’t believe there’s a problem. And he must lead by example. And he, unlike so many of us, must be willing admit that he is wrong. 
Pirates of the Arabian
Posted by zoboxrox in crime, environment, human rights, international, malfunction, military, politics on April 15th, 2009
Sorry I’ve been MIA the past week, I was captured by pirates. Bad joke, too soon? Not really, unless you are one of those pirates. In what could be considered Obama’s first…what were the exact words?…”International Crisis” (thank you Biden) he has proven himself a respectable Commander in Chief, and seems to have pleased both ends of the spectrum with his recent action in regards to the hostage situation off the coast of Somalia. And while everyone is pretty content with the result of the simple yet resounding military action (Navy SEALS are pretty badasss) and Obama himself has promised to “halt the rise of piracy“, there seems to be a general lack of interest in WHY this occurred in the first place. So cheers to the State Department, welcome home Captain Phillips, and good shooting Navy Snipers, but there is an ugly truth about piracy in the Indian Ocean, and though we love our Action Adventures here in the US, this story is not as simple as good guys versus bad ones, and no one looks like Johnny Depp.
Here is Africa. On the easternmost coast, The Horn of Africa, jutting up into the Arabian Sea, is Somalia, one of the poorest countries in the world. Notice its proximity to the Middle East, and most especially its access to the trade routes to and from Saudi Arabia. What, might you ask, is all the fighting about? Did you guess oil? If so, you’re actually wrong.
To understand the current climate in Somalia, a little history is required, and while it dates back over 2000 years, for our purposes we can begin in 1990, when the ongoing civil war first broke out in the East African nation. After the complete collapse of central government and a disruption in agriculture and food distribution, Somalia saw a prolonged period of widespread famine. First, and perhaps most memorably in 1992, when UNISOM I was established by the UN and UNITAF by the US, but then again in 1996, and 1999, and 2001, and 2006, and 2008.
The proximity of Somalia to the ocean is a major factor in its economic development, and a modern fishing industry helped fuel the country’s economy through previous periods of drought. With the dissolution of the central government, however, the waters off Somalia became ungoverned, quite obviously. This allowed for two very serious problems to occur simultaneously in the waters off the coast.
Following the massive tsunami of December 2004, there have emerged allegations that after the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in the late 1980s, Somalia’s long, remote shoreline was used as a dump site for the disposal of toxic waste. The huge waves which battered northern Somalia after the tsunami brought with them tons of nuclear and toxic waste that was dumped in Somali waters, by several European firms. The European Green Party followed up these allegations by presenting before the press and the European Parliament in Strasbourg copies of contracts signed by two European companies — the Italian Swiss firm, Achair Partners, and an Italian waste broker, Progresso — and representatives of the warlords then in power, to accept 10 million tons of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million (then about £60 million)….there are far higher than normal cases of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, abdominal hemorrhages and unusual skin infections among many inhabitants of the areas around the northeastern towns– diseases consistent with radiation sickness….
At the same time, illegal trawlers began fishing Somalia’s seas with an estimated $300 million of tuna, shrimp, and lobster being taken each year depleting stocks previously available to local fishermen. Through interception with speedboats, Somali fishermen tried to either dissuade the dumpers and trawlers or levy a “tax” on them as compensation. In an interview, Sugule Ali, one of the pirate leaders explained “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits (to be) those who illegally fish and dump in our seas.” Peter Lehr, a Somalia piracy expert at the University of St. Andrews says “It’s almost like a resource swap, Somalis collect up to $100 million a year from pirate ransoms off their coasts and the Europeans and Asians poach around $300 million a year in fish from Somali waters.“
So while the people of Somalia were literally starving to death, a multitude of European and Asian countries saw the opportunity to fish illegally and dump toxic waste off the Horn of Africa. NOT VERY NICE! Democracy Now has a really good interview about this very subject that I suggest to anyone who is interested in the whole truth, and not just the sliver we’re fed.
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