Archive for February 4th, 2014

04
Feb
14

Night Owl Chat

By Chipsticks 104 Comments
Categories: All Photos

@petesouza: Waving at President Obama’s motorcade today in Maryland

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Chat on!

04
Feb
14

A Tweet or Two

By Chipsticks 131 Comments
Categories: All Photos

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04
Feb
14

Opportunity for All: Connect-ED

By Chipsticks 108 Comments
Categories: All Photos, All Videos and Articles
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

President Obama makes the thumbs up sign as he ends a speech about his ConnectED goal of connecting 99% of students to next generation broadband and wireless technology within five years, Tuesday, Feb. 4, at Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Md

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Text of the President’s remarks here

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WH.gov: Making Progress on ConnectED

Today, President Obama visited Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Maryland to announce major progress on the ConnectED initiative, designed to enrich K-12 education for every student in America. ConnectED empowers teachers with the best technology and the training to make the most of it, and empowers students through individualized learning and rich, digital content.

Preparing America’s students with the skills they need to get good jobs and compete with countries around the world relies increasingly on interactive, personalized learning experiences driven by new technology. Yet fewer than 30% of America’s schools have the broadband they need to connect to today’s technology. Under ConnectED, however, 99% of American students will have access to next-generation broadband by 2017. That connectivity will help transform the classroom experience for all students, regardless of income.

As the President announced today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will invest $2 billion over the next two years to dramatically expand high-speed Internet connectivity for America’s schools and libraries — connecting more than 20 million students to next-generation broadband and wireless. He also announced that private-sector companies have committed more than $750 million to deliver cutting-edge technologies to classrooms, including:

Apple, which will donate $100 million in iPads, MacBooks, and other products, along with content and professional development tools to enrich learning in disadvantaged U.S. schools

AT&T, which pledged more than $100 million to give middle school students free Internet connectivity for educational devices over their wireless network for three years

Autodesk, which pledged to make their 3D design program “Design the Future” available for free in every secondary school in the U.S. — more than $250 million in value

Microsoft, which will launch a substantial affordability program open to all U.S. public schools by deeply discounting the price of its Windows operating system, which will decrease the price of Windows-based devices

O’Reilly Media, which is partnering with Safari Books Online to make more than $100 million in educational content and tools available for free to every school in the U.S.

Sprint, which will offer free wireless service for up to 50,000 low-income high school students over the next four years, valued at $100 million

Verizon, which announced a multi-year program to support ConnectED through up to $100 million in cash and in-kind commitments

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President Obama visits  Buck Lodge Middle School

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Dotster: President Obama’s announcements today are so important in bringing opportunity and advantage to all. I know my Ct. grandkids’ school has provided ipads to all students for 2 or 3 years now. It’s a great neighborhood school with kids from all backgrounds due to participation in a successful bussing program from the inner city. I’m not sure of the details, but I know they have a real aggressive PTO which went after grants and donations from the business community for funding for the ipads and other innovative programs. Similar advantages at the very diverse h.s. where my daughter teaches in Indy which has state of the art everything. Eli Lilly there and other corporate donors have also figured out that an educated, successful community is good for them, good for all. A win-win. It is very encouraging that this kind of opportunity will now be more widely available——it will indeed make a huge difference. Good to see the corp. community stepping up, doing some good for a nice change.

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WH.gov: How ConnectED works

Upgrading connectivity

The ConnectED initiative will, within five years, connect 99 percent of America’s students to the digital age through next-generation broadband and high-speed wireless in their schools and libraries. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sprint, and Verizon are already providing their support, collectively pledging to connect more than 15,000 schools and 20 million students by the end of 2015.

ConnectED will also provide better broadband access for students in rural areas, by expanding successful efforts to connect parts of the country that typically have trouble attracting investment in broadband infrastructure.

Training teachers

Our teachers are being asked to do more than ever, and they need to be equipped with better tools to help them succeed. Fortunately, technology can play a central role in this.

For example, new digital education tools that allow for real-time assessments of student learning, provide more immediate feedback to drive professional development, and enable the creation of interactive online lessons can empower teachers to understand each student’s strengths and weaknesses and design lessons and activities that better meet their needs.

The ConnectED initiative invests in improving the skills of teachers, ensuring that every educator in America receives support and training in using education technology tools that can improve student learning.

Additionally, ConnectED will lead to new resources for teachers from any school, at any time, to open their classrooms to interactive demonstrations, lessons from world-renowned experts, or the opportunity to build learning communities and to collaborate with other educators across the country or world.

Encouraging private-sector innovation

Educational devices supported by high-speed networks are the portal to the world of online learning and interactive content, to personalized education software that adapts to students’ needs, and to breakthrough advances in assessing understanding and mastery.

These devices give students access to more rigorous and engaging classes, new learning resources, rich visualizations of complex concepts, and instruction in any foreign language. They also give students more opportunities to work at their own speed and receive additional one-on-one help they need to develop their knowledge and skills.

Leading technology companies are capable of producing feature-rich educational devices that are price-competitive with basic textbooks. And a robust market in educational software can unlock the full educational potential of broadband investment, while creating American jobs and export opportunities in a global education marketplace of more than $1 trillion.

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President Obama greets a member of the audience during a visit to Buck Lodge Middle School

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James Richardson, principal of Buck Lodge Middle School, celebrates with his students and teachers after President Barack Obama spoke at their school

04
Feb
14

Rise and Shine

By Chipsticks 161 Comments
Categories: All Photos, All Videos and Articles
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On This Day: Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking at a rally for the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama in Hartford, the day before the Connecticut Super Tuesday primary. Congressional Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Chris Murphy and John B. Larson are onstage behind Ted Kennedy, along with Caroline Kennedy and Barack Obama. February 4, 2008

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Today:

11:10: President Obama visits a Buck Lodge Middle School classroom, Adelphi, Maryland

11:30: Delivers remarks on ConnectED

White House Live

1:0: Press Briefing by Jay Carney

3:0: The President and Vice President meet with Department of Defense leadership on Afghanistan

4:30: The President and Vice President meet with the House Democratic Caucus, The East Room

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AP: Obama Secures $750M in Pledges to Get Kids Online

Claiming progress in his campaign to get American schools wired for the future, President Barack Obama is announcing commitments from U.S. companies totaling about $750 million to connect more students to high-speed Internet.

Apple is pledging $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools. AT&T and Sprint are contributing free Internet service through their wireless networks. Verizon is pitching in up to $100 million in cash and in-kind contributions. And Microsoft is making Windows available at discounted prices and offering 12 million free copies of Microsoft Office software.

Obama was to announce the commitments Tuesday at a middle school in the Maryland suburbs near Washington. Also in the pipeline: an addition $2 billion that the Federal Communications Commission is setting aside from service fees over two years to connect another 20 million students to high-speed Internet.

More here

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Haaretz: Boycotting reality

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement at the Munich Security Conference, that Israel will face boycotts should negotiations with the Palestinians fail, is a level-headed view of reality that the Israeli government chooses to continually ignore.

…. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu beats them all: Instead of welcoming Kerry as an ally, he publicly quarrels with him and hints that the secretary of state is trying to pressure Israel to “give up essential interests.”

Netanyahu refuses to understand that Israel’s most essential interest is ending the conflict, and that Kerry is a fair, dedicated, mediator who needs the support of all parties in order to complete this complex process. Netanyahu refuses to understand that now is the time for big decisions, not small politics.

Full article here

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National Journal: How Obama Won the War on Iran Sanctions

A month ago, the president was on the outs – even among Democrats. Today, he’s quelled critics and getting his chance to make negotiations work.

The push for new sanctions on Iran has stalled. The Democrats who bucked President Obama to back the sanctions bill are backpedaling mightily—no longer even pretending they’re pushing Harry Reid to hold a vote on the measure. And while there’s still plenty of chest-pounding and posturing, the debate’s end result seems clear: The Senate will wait, at least so long as the negotiations move in the right direction.

That’s a full flip from just more than a month ago. Before the December recess, the Senate’s pro-sanctions faction was surging. Senators—including Democrats who are typically Obama loyalists—were agreeing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the nuclear negotiations with Iran bordered on capitulation.

So how did Obama — a supposedly feckless president when it comes to handling Congress — turn the tide? Obama’s in-person, all-hands-on-deck advocacy campaign with the Senate appears to have advanced his cause, but it’s not that simple.

More here

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South Carolina’s battle over Medicaid expansion: After the Supreme Court ruled that states were not obligated to expand their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, South Carolina was one of the first to opt out. PBS NewsHour’s Mary Jo Brooks reports on the effects for residents who are still uninsured, plus a small alternative program designed to reach some of them.

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Bill Hammond (NY Daily News): Anti-Obamacare, facts be damned

House Speaker John Boehner lobbed a social media stink bomb this weekend that distilled Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act to their cynical, knee-jerk essence.

“Sick kids denied specialty care due to #Obamacare,” his Twitter feed proclaimed on Saturday, linking to a conservative blog post based on a TV news report out of Seattle. His Facebook page weighed in on the same story, calling it “heartbreaking” and vowing that House Republicans “will continue working to scrap this broken law.”

There’s just one problem: The shocking claim — that the President’s health reforms resulted in sick children being denied care — was flat-out false. Which Boehner’s staff must have known, assuming they actually read the material they were helping to spread across the Internet.

In fact, all of the children in question did get care, as was perfectly clear in the Jan. 30 press release from Seattle Children’s Hospital that got this snowball started.

More here

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USA Today: Obama to visit Saudi Arabia in March

President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia next month amid reports of a strained American-Saudi relationship over Iran and Syria.

White House press secretary Jay Carney announced that Obama would meet with Saudi King Abdullah in late March, calling it “part of regular consultations” between the two countries.

“The president looks forward to discussing with King Abdullah the enduring and strategic ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia as well as ongoing cooperation to advance a range of common interests related to Gulf and regional security, peace in the Middle East, countering violent extremism, and other issues of prosperity and security,” Carney said.

The Saudi stop will be added to a late March trip that includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Vatican City.

More here

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Brian Beutler: Angry right’s secret revulsion: Why they really dodge minimum wage questions

Obama’s decision to increase the minimum wage for a small number of federal contractors has drawn out the crazies

It’s no great secret that Republicans oppose increasing the minimum wage. They don’t pretend it’s something they want to do under any circumstances. They don’t even really bother disguising their opposition. They cloak their view in dated and oversimplified economic arguments about labor demand and economic growth when the real impediment is ideological, and so it’s a somewhat better kept secret that many Republicans oppose the minimum wage altogether.

Opposing the minimum wage isn’t a politically seemly thing to do, though, and thus the great political consequence of President Obama’s decision, announced during his State of the Union address, to institute a $10.10 minimum wage for future federal contracts, will be to draw the extent of this opposition out into the open.

More here

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Missed this yesterday:

Jonathan Capehart: O’Reilly outFoxed by Obama

The pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama conducted by Bill O’Reilly was not only notable for the Fox News anchor’s constant interruptions, but also for his harping on old news. The travails of HealthCare.gov, the murderous attacks in Benghazi and the actions taken by the IRS against conservative groups chewed up 9 minutes and 45 seconds of the 10-minute sitdown.

We all know that those topics are nothing but chum for O’Reilly’s anti-Obama audience. But the president successfully avoided the rhetorical traps set by the ambassador from “fair and balanced.” And he respectfully stood up to the disrespect demanded by said audience by giving as good as he got.

…. It’s always difficult to tell whether the tail is wagging the dog over there at Fox, but I would argue that the IRS conspiracy theories and others are in large part due to O’Reilly and Fox. Neither the station nor its anchor has shown Obama or his office the respect both deserve. And that 10-minute interview was a perfect illustration of it.

Full article here

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Steve Benen: A narrow path for ‘common ground’

Every Saturday morning, President Obama delivers a weekly address, which is immediately followed by a Republican response, but this week’s GOP address was a little different: it was delivered by four Republicans instead of one. The message: there may be some room for a little “bipartisan common ground.”

…. Before getting into the particulars, it’s striking to realize just how small the “common ground” is. There are all kinds of popular ideas that enjoy broad public support – on job creation, aid to struggling families, immigration, public safety, etc. – but none of them made the cut in the official Republican statement.

Instead, progress is now possible in just four areas – four narrow areas.

More here

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Steve Benen: NRCC crafts new fundraising gambit

Florida’s 13th congressional district will host a special election next month and by all appearances, it should be a close contest. Democrats have nominated former state CFO Alex Sink, who very nearly won the 2010 gubernatorial race, and have high hopes about her chances.

The National Republican Congressional Committee is also taking the race very seriously – so seriously, in fact, that the NRCC has come up with an unusual fundraising gambit.

Folks can go to a website that looks legitimate – contribute.sinkforcongress2014.com – and find a nice photo of the Democratic candidate alongside a graphic that reads, “Alex Sink – Congress.” If you’re not reading carefully, you might assume this is a page for Sink supporters to make a campaign contribution to their preferred candidate. But it’s not – this is a page set up by Republicans.

More here

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On This Day:

Hartford, February 4, 2008

Senator Obama shakes hands with supporters at the end of a rally at the XL Center in Hartford

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President Obama greets attendees after making remarks in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2010 (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

President Obama signs pictures and other items in a holding room before making remarks in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2010 (Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, Feb 4, 2013

The Minneapolis Police Department Special Operations Center, Feb 4, 2013

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MoooOOOooorning!

04
Feb
14

Early Bird Chat

By Chipsticks 97 Comments
Categories: All Photos

On This Day: A bronze bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is visible in the foreground as President Barack Obama meets with senior advisors, in the Oval Office, Feb. 4, 2010 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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MoooOOOooorning Early Birds – Happy Tuesday!

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