Weekly Address: President Obama – Coming Together On Thanksgiving

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 HouseWeekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama wished the American people a happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter our differences, we are still one people, part of something bigger than ourselves. Because what makes us American are the ideals to which we pledge our allegiance. And it’s about our ability to live up to the creed “E Pluribus Unum” — that out of many, we are one.

Transcript: Weekly Address: Coming Together On Thanksgiving

Remarks of President Barack Obama as Delivered
Weekly Address, The White House, November 24, 2016

Hi, everybody. On behalf of the Obama family – Michelle, Malia, Sasha, Grandma, Bo, and Sunny – I want to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. Like so many of you, we’ll spend the day with friends and family, turkey and touchdowns. We’ll give thanks for each other, and for all that God has given us. And we’ll reflect on what truly binds us as Americans.

That’s never been more important. As a country, we’ve just emerged from a noisy, passionate, and sometimes divisive campaign season. After all, elections are often where we emphasize what sets us apart. We face off in a contest of “us” versus “them.” We focus on the candidate we support instead of some of the ideals we share.

But a few short weeks later, Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter our differences, we are still one people, part of something bigger than ourselves. We are communities that move forward together. We are neighbors who look out for one another, especially those among us with the least. We are always, simply, Americans.

That’s why, through the fog of Civil War, President Lincoln saw what mattered most – the unalienable truths for which so many gave their lives, and which made possible “a new birth of freedom.” And so precisely when the fate of the Union hung in the balance, he boldly proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving, when the nation’s gifts “should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

Today, we continue to give thanks for those blessings, and to all who ensured that they would be our inheritance. We remember the determined patriots who landed at the edge of the world in search of freedom. We give thanks to the brave men and women who defend that freedom in every corner of the world. And we honor all people – from the First Americans to our newest arrivals – who continue to shape our nation’s story, enrich our heritage, and give meaning to our founding values, values we must never take for granted. That in America, we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common belief – that all of us are created equal. That we may think, worship, and speak, and love as we please. That the gift of democracy is ours, and ours alone, to nurture and protect.

Never doubt, that is what makes us American – not where we come from, what we look like, or what faith we practice, but the ideals to which we pledge our allegiance. It’s about our capacity to live up to the creed as old as our founding: “E Pluribus Unum” – that out of many, we are one. And as long as we continue to welcome the contributions of all people, as long as we stand up for each other, speak out for what is right, and stay true to these ideals – not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard – then no one can ever take away our liberty. Our best days will always be ahead. And we will keep building a future where all of our children know the promise of America.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Bolding added.

~

8 Comments

  1. President Obama:

    We honor all people – from the First Americans to our newest arrivals – who continue to shape our nation’s story, enrich our heritage, and give meaning to our founding values, values we must never take for granted. That in America, we are bound not by any one race or religion, but rather an adherence to a common belief – that all of us are created equal. That we may think, worship, and speak, and love as we please. That the gift of democracy is ours, and ours alone, to nurture and protect. […]

    And as long as we continue to welcome the contributions of all people, as long as we stand up for each other, speak out for what is right, and stay true to these ideals – not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard – then no one can ever take away our liberty. Our best days will always be ahead. And we will keep building a future where all of our children know the promise of America.

  2. In the News: undoing regulations is not as easy as it sounds

    Undoing regulations, [Susan Dudley, who heads the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University] says, is neither quick nor simple. To repeal a regulation, Dudley says a federal agency “would have to go through the notice and comment rule-making process, the same process that’s used to develop a new regulation and that would take at least a year.”

    So basically everything an agency does to create a rule, it has to do to repeal one.

    There is a work-around, at least for the most recently approved regulations: the Congressional Review Act. Under that rarely used law, Congress can repeal rules with a simple majority vote — but only those adopted during the last 60 working days of the current Congressional session. So in other words it, would only affect regulations that, for this Congress — which spent a lot of time in recess — go back to May.
    […]
    “The House and Senate are going to be really busy next spring, so to the extent they want to work repealing past regulations is up to them,” said [conservative think-tanker Sam] Batkins.

    There is another possible stumbling block. Under the Congressional Review Act, once Congress repeals a regulation, the new administration can’t go back and revisit the issue. So for instance, if lawmakers voted to repeal the truck emissions rule, but the Trump administration still wished for a less-restrictive regulation, it would be barred from proposing it.

    • The Obama Administration is pushing through rules

      Federal agencies are rushing out a final volley of executive actions in the last two months of Barack Obama’s presidency, despite warnings from Republicans in Congress and the reality that Donald Trump will have the power to erase much of their handiwork after Jan. 20.

      Regulations on commodities speculation, air pollution from the oil industry, doctors’ Medicare drug payments and high-skilled immigrant workers are among the rules moving through the pipeline as Obama’s administration grasps at one last chance to cement his legacy. So are regulations tightening states’ oversight of online colleges and protecting funding for Planned Parenthood.

      [Some are halting work but] other agencies have signaled full steam ahead despite the threat of Republicans consigning their work to oblivion, in a dynamic that will be crucial to deciding how much of Obama’s legacy survives the ascendant Trump era.

      “As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote agency employees the day after the Nov. 8 election. “Thank you for taking that run with me. I’m looking forward to all the progress that still lies ahead.”

      As many as 98 final regulations under review at the White House as of Nov. 15 could be implemented before Trump takes office. Seventeen regulations awaiting final approval are considered “economically significant,” with an estimated economic impact of at least $100 million a year.

  3. In the News: Climate Change mitigation loses the election

    Bill McKibben, [noted] the worst case is that Trump “succeeds in derailing the very fragile global turn towards clean energy just at the moment when it was starting to accelerate — and the result of that is measured in degrees of global temperature and meters of sea level rise stretching out over millennia.”

    Apparently, outside of actual climate experts, it is hard to find “experts” who realize the future of humanity is on a knife’s edge. The one exception was economist Daniel Altman, who warns Trump “could easily cause as many deaths and inflict as much hardship [as the Iraq War] … by reversing the world’s progress to combat climate change.”

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