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In President Obama’s June 25 climate speech, he announced that the United States would no longer provide public financing for coal plants overseas, with the President noting that aid for coal plants would only come where “there’s no other …

This morning the Bureau of Economic Analysis released a comprehensive revision to the National Income and Product Accounts, covering the full history of data since 1929. The revision showed that the recovery from the Great Recession has been slightly faster than previously reported, with real gross domestic product (GDP) expanding by a cumulative 8.5% from 2009:Q2 to 2013:Q1, compared to the previous estimate of 8.1% growth over that period. Including the advance estimate for 2013:Q2, real GDP has risen by 9.0% since the business-cycle trough in 2009:Q2 (see chart). In addition, real GDP surpassed its pre-recession peak in 2011:Q2, two quarters sooner than was reported prior to the revision, and is 4.4% higher than it was at the business-cycle peak in 2007:Q4.

The revision also showed that while the contraction during the Great Recession was slightly less severe than previously reported, it remains the largest decline since quarterly data became available in 1947. Cumulatively, real GDP fell by 4.3% during the recession, less than the 4.7% drop previously reported. The steep drop in economic activity caused by the recession makes it imperative that more work is done to raise economic growth and speed job creation.

The comprehensive revision to the national accounts, which is the first since July 2009, includes additional source data received by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, as well as methodological changes designed to better reflect the evolving nature of the U.S. economy. For instance, the GDP data released today incorporates input-output tables derived from the once-every-five-years Economic Census, and adopts an expanded definition of business investment that includes spending on research and development (R&D) and the creation of original works of art like movies. All told, these and other changes raised the level of GDP in the first quarter of 2013 by $551 billion at an annual rate (or 3.4%), from $16.0 trillion to $16.5 trillion.

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President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy at the Amazon Chattanooga Fulfillment Center in Chattnooga, Tenn., July 30, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

President Obama traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee today to talk about the first and most important cornerstone of middle class security: a good job in a durable, growing industry.

“We should be doing everything we can as a country to create more good jobs that pay good wages,” President Obama said. And plenty of independent economists, business owners, and people from both parties are already in agreement on some of the ingredients that we need for creating good jobs, he explained:

Putting people back to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure. Equipping our kids and our workers with the best skills. Leading the world in scientific research that helps to pave the way for new jobs in new industries. Accelerating our clean energy and natural gas revolutions. Fixing a broken immigration system so that American workers aren’t undercut, undermined because some businesses are unscrupulous and hiring folks and not paying them decent wages.

“We're not lacking for ideas, we're just lacking action, especially out of Washington,” he said.

"So I’m going to try offering something that serious people in both parties should be able to support:  a deal that simplifies the tax code for our businesses and creates good jobs with good wages for middle-class folks who work at those businesses." 

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Ed Note: This is a cross post from The Huffington Post. You can find the original post here.

My 92-year-old father first ran for public office after he finished his military service in World War II. He served on the city council, and later was elected to Congress. In 1965, he helped write and voted for Medicare and Medicaid, which celebrate their 48th anniversary today.

Since then, Medicare has been a guaranteed benefit earned after a lifetime of hard work for millions of America's seniors. Medicaid has provided affordable health coverage for millions of low-income working Americans and families. Both programs have helped keep people from falling into poverty. Both have been lifelines to better health and sources of peace of mind and security.

That's why President Obama has made it a top priority to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid so that our seniors and future generations can get the health care they need and peace of mind they deserve.

Because of the health law, seniors are seeing more dollars saved in their wallets and better benefits to their health.

More than 6.6 million people on Medicare have saved an average of more than $1,000 on prescription drugs since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. That's money that has been used for groceries, utilities, and visits with grandchildren instead of being sent to drug companies — and that's how the Affordable Care Act is closing the "donut hole" that too many seniors fall into.

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Yesterday, the White House released a report that provides further evidence that commonsense, bipartisan immigration reform would provide economic benefits for our nation’s agriculture sector, our workforce, and rural communities. The report highlights the strong growth states’ agriculture sectors have seen in recent years and underscores how that growth can support other parts of our economy – especially in rural communities focused on agricultural development. In fact, in many of these communities, a temporary  worker program and an earned path to citizenship will boost farm output and produce other positive spillover effects. Coupled with a decline in native-born rural populations, the strength and continuity of rural America is contingent on commonsense immigration reform that improves job opportunity, provides local governments with the tools they need to succeed, and increases economic growth. 

In June, the Senate passed historic legislation that is largely consistent with the President’s principles for commonsense immigration reform with a strong bipartisan vote. This bill would strengthen border security, while providing an earned path to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers who are vital to our nation’s agriculture industry, and a new temporary worker program negotiated by major grower associations and farmworker groups. If enacted, the Senate bill would result in undocumented workers paying a fine, their full share of taxes and is estimated to allow an estimated 1.5 million agricultural workers and their dependents to earn legal status. A diverse group of stakeholders know this: it’s a major reason why they are calling on the House to join the Senate in acting to fix our broken immigration system in a way that requires responsibility from everyone — both from workers here illegally and from those who hire them—and guarantees that everyone is playing by the same rules. 

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Yesterday, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez met with civil rights leaders, and state and local elected officials at the White House to discuss how to safeguard every eligible American’s right to vote in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on Shelby County vs. Holder.

President Barack Obama meets with Civil Rights Leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, July 29, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

The Supreme Court’s decision invalidating one of the Voting Rights Act’s core provisions, upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.

President Obama acknowledged that for nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act has helped secure the right to vote for millions of Americans, and expressed deep disappointment about the recent decision.  He asked the leaders in the room for their ideas on how to strengthen voting rights, and also encouraged them to continue educating their communities on the Voting Rights Act, and how to exercise voting rights.

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Dr. Jill Biden talks with members of the USS Fitzgerald during their stop in Singapore. (Photo Credit: Jay C. Pugh)

Before leaving Singapore this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a BBQ with U.S. service members and their families stationed in Singapore, as well as crewmen from the USS Fitzgerald, docked in Singapore at the time. Joe and I also visited with service members, their families, and DOD employees in Hawaii, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. When Joe and I travel, we love nothing more than to meet with our men and women in uniform and their families to thank them for their service and sacrifice.

Military families face so many challenges, as spouses get deployed and families move around. When I was in Singapore, I met a woman who was in the Navy and she told me that this was her 14th move. As a military mom, I understand a bit of what these families are going through. Our son Beau was deployed for a year to Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard and our son Hunter is an Ensign in the Navy Reserves. This experience, as well as the joys and concerns we heard from military families as we traveled around the world led First Lady Michele Obama and I to start Joining Forces. It is our hope that we can rally all Americans to support our veterans and military families. Joining Forces brings together public and private resources to help with the employment, education, and wellness of our veterans, servicemen and women, and their families.

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Study will help biologists track wild polar bears’ response to climate change

PORTLAND, Ore. — Tasul, an Oregon Zoo polar bear, recently landed her first white-collar job: research assistant for the U.S. Geological Survey. Her assignment: wearing a high-tech collar to help solve a climate change mystery. 

“Scientists and wildlife managers need to understand how polar bears are responding as sea ice retreats,” said Amy Cutting, Oregon Zoo curator. “But polar bears are notoriously difficult to study in the wild. Direct behavioral observations are nearly impossible.”

Enter Tasul. 

Within her USGS-issued collar is an accelerometer — a device found in most smart phones — that detects minute changes in motion and direction of movement. The device turns Tasul’s everyday behaviors like walking, eating, sleeping and swimming into electronic signals. By recording video of her wearing the collar and matching the behavior to the signal, researchers will create a sort of digital fingerprint for polar bear behavior. 

Once the signals are calibrated, similar collars can be placed on free-roaming bears in the Arctic, allowing researchers to monitor their behavior without having to observe them directly. These collars will be equipped with quick-release mechanisms so scientists can open them remotely and let them drop off the bears after the necessary data has been obtained. 

“Our research shows that polar bears are being displaced from sea ice habitats they formerly used,” said Anthony Pagano, a wildlife biologist with the USGS Alaska Science Center leading this study. “This collaborative project with the Oregon Zoo will help us understand the implications between going to land or staying with the ice as it retreats hundreds of kilometers north into the Arctic Basin.” 

To train Tasul to wear her “techcessory,” keepers slowly acclimated the bear to different types of neckwear over several months, using a special training module that allows close — but safe — access. Zoo visitors may see Tasul wearing the collar periodically throughout the summer. 

“Tasul was the perfect candidate for this study because she already participates in many health-care behaviors voluntarily, as opposed to requiring tranquilization,” Cutting said. “She doesn’t mind wearing the collar and actively cooperates. She is a very curious bear and seems interested in all the extra attention from keepers.” 

The training sessions also gave zoo staffers a chance to get a bear’s-eye view of Tasul’s daily activities by attaching a small GoPro camera to her training collar. Footage from the “Tasul-cam,” is available on the Oregon Zoo website. 

“There’s a lot we need to learn about how climate change is affecting polar bears,” Cutting said, “so it’s very rewarding to see Tasul offering researchers a chance to study this threatened species in a new way.”

This project is part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Changing Arctic Ecosystems initiative, which includes research on the effects of climate change on polar bears.

The zoo is a service of Metro and is dedicated to its mission of inspiring the community to create a better future for wildlife. Committed to conservation, the zoo is currently working to save endangered California condors, Oregon silverspot and Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies, western pond turtles and Oregon spotted frogs. Other projects include studies on Asian elephants, polar bears, orangutans and giant pandas. Celebrating 125 years of community support, the zoo relies in part on donations through the Oregon Zoo Foundation to undertake these and many other animal welfare, education and sustainability programs. 

The zoo opens at 9 a.m. daily and is located five minutes from downtown Portland, just off Highway 26. 

Final Book Now Available

Solar irradiance is a vital source of energy input for the Earth’s climate system and its variability has the potential to mitigate or exacerbate a human-created climate. Maintaining an unbroken record of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) is critical in resolving ongoing debates regarding the potential role of solar variability in influencing Earth’s climate. Space-borne instruments have acquired TSI data since 1978. Currently, the best calibrated and lowest noise source of TSI measurements is the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) onboard NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE). These TIM-era data are of higher quality than the older data in the full record. Thus, the TSI climate data record (CDR) has two components. There is the shorter, but more accurate record of the TIM era and the full (33+ year) space-based TSI measurement record. Both are important and require preservation.

Review of NOAA Working Group Report on Maintaining the Continuation of Long-Term Satellite Total Irradiance Observations evaluates NOAA’s plan for mitigating the loss of total solar irradiance measurements from space, given the likelihood of losing this capacity from instruments currently on the SORCE satellite in coming years and the short term/experimental nature of the currently identified method of filling the data gap. This report evaluates NOAA’s plan for mitigating the gap in total solar irradiance data.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Space and Aeronautics | Earth Sciences

Newly designed maps covering Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are now available online for free download

To keep pace with a rapid schedule and increasing demand, the USGS has posted new US Topo quadrangles covering Indiana(640 maps), Iowa (1,011 maps), North Carolina (833 maps), Pennsylvania (798 maps) and Virginia (596 maps). These new quads replace the first edition US Topo maps for those states. The replaced maps will be added to the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection and are also available for free download from The National Map and the USGS Map Locator & Downloader website.

 “The newly redesigned US Topo maps are visually appealing, especially with the addition of the shaded relief layer”, explained Bob Davis, the new US Topo Project Manager. “The addition of shaded relief and other design components demonstrate our commitment to improving the product to meet our users’ needs. I encourage you to download these maps, compare them against previous US Topo maps and drop us your comments. We value your input.”

US Topo maps now have a crisper, cleaner design – enhancing readability of maps for online and printed use. Map symbols are easier to read over the digital aerial photograph layer whether the imagery is turned on or off. Improvements to symbol definitions (color, line thickness, line symbols, area fills), layer order, and annotation fonts are additional features of this supplemental release. Users can now adjust the transparency for some features and layers to increase visibility of multiple competing layers.

US Topo maps are updated every three years, with the initial round completed last September. Maps for Hawaii are currently in production with Alaska production starting later this year.

Re-design enhancements and new features:

• Crisper, cleaner design improves online and printed readability while retaining the look and feel of traditional USGS topographic maps
• New functional road classification schema has been applied
• A slight screening (transparency) has been applied to some features to enhance visibility of multiple competing layers
• Updated free fonts that support diacritics
• New PDF Legend attachment
• Metadata formatted to support multiple browsers
• New shaded relief layer for enhanced view of the terrain
• Military installation boundaries, post offices and cemeteries

US Topo maps are created from geographic datasets in The National Map, and deliver visible content such as high-resolution aerial photography, which was not available on older paper-based topographic maps. The new US Topo maps provide modern technical advantages that support wider and faster public distribution and on-screen geographic analysis tools for users.

The new digital electronic topographic maps are delivered in GeoPDF image software format and may be viewed using Adobe Reader, available as a no cost download.

For more information, go to: http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/

Proposed US Topo map production graphic showing; states that were updated in 2012, in yellow; states that have, or will be updated in 2013, in red; and states are scheduled to be updated in 2014, in blue. (High resolution image)

I have been working in and on Pakistan for many years, starting there as an economist in the 1980s. It is perhaps the most exciting and challenging partner country for anyone interested in development. It has it all – conflict and insecurity, difficult governance, poor social indicators but also enormous promise with a young population, a dynamic private sector and potentially huge regional economic opportunities.

UK Aid being distributed in Pakistan. Picture: Vicki Francis/DFID

The recent election has unleashed a fresh wave of optimism. Why? Because it was the most credible election in Pakistan’s history. Because it was the first time one democratic government has handed over to another. But also because politicians were finally forced to talk about how they would deal with Pakistan’s problems, electricity shortages, inflation and insecurity.

But almost 3 months on from the election, governments in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, Quetta and Gilgit are only just beginning to get to grips with the challenges they face. Only they – not donors, not NGOs – have the resources, scale and reach to make and sustain the transformational change that Pakistan needs. But policy capacity is thin, implementation is weak, public finances are extremely stretched, and public accountability mechanisms are inadequate.

That is where DFID can help, providing carefully targeted support to help create the circumstances for growth, stability and prosperity. Over the last 3 years, we have scaled up our presence in Pakistan dramatically – more than doubling our staff and our programme budget, designating representatives to Lahore and Peshawar, and setting out our ambitions in a clear plan. The expertise of our staff, our ability to provide grant assistance, and our strong international networks means DFID support is in high demand.

Children at a UK aid funded primary school in Sinoh. Picture: Vicki Francis/DFID

Our programmes focus on building peace and stability; making democracy work; promoting macroeconomic stability, growth and jobs; and getting the state to deliver services to its citizens. Support for education reform is the single largest component of this, and also DFID’s largest bilateral education programme worldwide.

In addition we support a national cash transfer programme, encourage innovation and improvements to access in microfinance, better provision of new-born and maternal health care services and provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people and those affected by floods.

By 2015 DFID’s work alone will benefit 4 million children in primary education, help 1.23 million poor people (more than half women) access microfinance loans and prevent half a million children from becoming undernourished. While some of our programmes operate on a national level, the bulk of them operate in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This ensures we do not take on more than we can manage.

Mona is running a dress making business set up using a microfinance loan backed by UK Aid. Picture: Vicki Francis/DFID

Alongside our programmes, we are heavily engaged in policy debates in the sectors in which we work but also on broader economic policy. Without better economic management and structural reform, Pakistan cannot hope to achieve the high growth it needs to raise living standards for its rapidly growing population. That is why we are working closely with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and others to try and support the new government’s efforts on tax, energy, state owned enterprise reform and other issues.

DFID’s programme in Pakistan is a priority for the UK government and for the International Development Secretary, Justine Greening. She has visited twice in the last 6 months. I accompanied her both times. The first took place in January, just as Tahir-ul Qadri’s Long March in Islamabad came to an end, and the second was at the start of July.

Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening in Pakistan. Picture: Vicki Francis/DFID

In July, Justine Greening met with Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif and his senior team where she reaffirmed DFID’s strong partnership with Punjab and jointly announced the expansion of the DFID supported Punjab Skills Development Programme. This will mean that by 2015, 135,000 men and women in Punjab will benefit from job skills training.

She also met with Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and welcomed the new government’s commitment to increase the tax to GDP ratio. She extended the UK’s offer to provide expert assistance through HMRC to Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue to help achieve this. And she agreed with Chief Minister Khattak that DFID and the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should develop a new strategic partnership to deepen our collaboration. So overall, the visit was a success. All the more so that all this and much else was done in 24 hours!

Following this historic election, the new governments at federal and provincial level are under pressure to deliver as never before. The next few years are critical for the future of Pakistan and the region. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of democracy in Pakistan hangs on how this set of governments performs. Our responsibility is to help in whatever modest way we can to try and ensure that 180 million people have a brighter future.

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Over the next few weeks we’ll be highlighting our development support to Pakistan and how we’re helping to push for change. We’ll be linking up with partners from across the British Pakistani community who are making a huge contribution to Pakistan’s development and promoting the positive voices for progress in country. To get the latest Pakistan development news straight to your inbox sign up for our quarterly newsletter.

If you’ve ever watched the seminal British comedy Yes, Minister, you’ll know that “technical” and “bureaucratic” are 2 words often associated with civil servants. They are also 2 words often associated with international organisations, though I won’t name any names… Most of the time, I disagree with these stereotypes, as I know so many dynamic and effective civil servants and international staff. I have also been trying to work to ensure that the organisation that I work on, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, isn’t bureaucratic or technical, especially since one of its predecessors, the “Working Party on Aid Effectiveness” was often accused of being overly technical. In particular, 1 of the major shifts the Global Partnership is meant to deliver is to bring something called the “monitoring framework” to life and out of a technical silo.

The monitoring framework is made up of 10 indicators that are designed to help the international community keep track of the progress that countries and other non-governmental development actors are making to ensure development is more effective.

But for many people the monitoring framework can sound very technical.

For example, 1 of the 10 indicators is called “the enabling environment for civil society”. To a lay person (including me until a few weeks ago) the indicator sounds very technical. It doesn’t give a very clear idea of what it might mean in the real world, and how things should change as a result.

But once you delve into it and talk to civil society organisations, its political implications and the impact on people’s lives soon become clear.

Civil society organisations can be defined as organisations that represent the space between individuals or families, and the market and government. They include trade unions, charities, foundations, journalists, and many more. Every year, an umbrella organisation of civil society organisations worldwide called CIVICUS, publishes a report called The State of Civil Society. This year’s report, released last month, carefully details how the space for civil society organisations to work has been reduced considerably in many places. Protests by citizens’ groups have been met with aggression from governments, journalists arrested, and many non-governmental organisations are facing funding reductions in part because of their campaigning and advocacy work. Many are having difficulties registering. In my view this is all bad news for development. If people cannot express their demands of governments or employers, it makes development more difficult to take place and have a lasting impact.

Development is: People being able to make demands of leaders

At the same time, there are many other trends outside of these formal structures that are enabling people to express their demands and influence change – often enabled by the internet. For example, the campaigning organisation Avaaz  has amassed 23 million members from 194 countries, and now regularly sets up petitions that consistently get over 1 million signatures. Some types of funding from individuals is growing, through sites such as indiegogo  and Kickstarter based in the US, and Demohour and SeedAsia based in China. Close to home here in the UK in 2012 there were boycotts of firms such as Starbucks and Amazon. It’s not for me to say whether these are “good causes” or not, but they do illustrate that citizens are coming together in different ways, expressing their views and power as consumers, to impact state and market choices.

Although the “enabling environment for civil society” indicator sounds technical, by helping keep track of these hot political issues it can actually help us understand the potential for effective development. Many of the other indicators in the Partnership’s monitoring framework have these exact ingredients. They can sound rather dry but they are actually determined by and can determine major political shifts.

As the former South African Minister for Communications Jay Naidoo said in a recent blog post – it’s all about the politics… The Global Partnership has a major opportunity to turn technical information on development effectiveness into real and political information. That will be its key to making a real difference.

• Testing knee-jerk reflexes with a rubber hammer.
• Shining a penlight into each eye to measure pupil response.
• Sounding a tuning fork near each ear to test hearing.
• Measuring blood pressure with an arm cuff and stethoscope.

• Mayumi Prins, Ph.D., director of the neuroscience education program and associate professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

• Students and their parents from Culver City High School, Grover Cleveland High School magnet program, Harvard–Westlake School, New West Charter and Venice High School.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its International Energy Outlook 2013 on July 25, reporting that global energy demand will grow by 56 percent between 2010 and 2040. According to EIA, most of this growth will come from the developing …

Today, the White House released a new analysis of the relationship between the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and job growth on Tumblr in the form of an animated GIF.

Recent news stories have cited anecdotes that restaurants are cutting employees’ hours and refraining from hiring workers due to the ACA. In reality, however, restaurants have had the fastest job growth of any industry in the retail and food services sector since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. The GIF also shows that restaurants have had even faster job growth than what would have been predicted from their growth in sales. Furthermore, workers in the restaurant industry have seen their average weekly hours increase since the ACA was signed, contrary to the notion that there has been a widespread shift to part-time hours.

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Prices for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) on health care goods and services rose just 1.1 percent over the twelve months ending in May 2013, the slowest rate of increase in nearly 50 years. The slowdown in PCE health care inflation has been widespread, with important contributions from two large components: hospital and nursing home services (which comprise 42 percent of total health care expenditures) and outpatient services (which comprise 34 percent of total health care expenditures). As the chart below shows, since March 2010, these two components of health spending have made notably smaller contributions to overall consumer health care inflation than in previous years.

The slowdown in consumer health care price inflation is consistent with a broad array of other evidence suggesting that the growth rate of health care costs is slowing:

• Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey indicate that for private sector employers offering health insurance, the annualized growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) costs for workers’ health insurance has slowed from 2.2 percent a year from 2006:Q4 to 2009:Q4 to 1.8 percent a year from 2009:Q4 to 2012:Q4, with a particularly marked slowdown occurring at smaller establishments. For establishments with fewer than 50 employees, employers’ real costs for workers’ health insurance grew just 1.0 percent a year from 2009:Q4 to 2012:Q4, half the rate observed over the preceding three years. 
• During the past several years, the Congressional Budget Office reports that it “has made a series of downward adjustments to its projections of spending for Medicaid and Medicare.” For example, “mostly reflecting the slower growth in the programs’ spending in recent years,” CBO now expects combined spending on the two programs to be about $200 billion lower in 2020 than what it forecast three years ago.
• From 2009 to 2011, nationwide real per capita health expenditures grew at the slowest pace since reporting began in 1960. 
• In 2012, premium growth for employer-sponsored insurance was at its lowest rate (3 percent) since the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey started in 1996.
• In 13 states that have publicly reported premiums for 2014, the average of the lowest-cost plan is nearly 20 percent below projections based on CBO premiums. This includes New York State, which recently announced that health insurance rates in 2014 will be at least 50 percent lower, on average, than the plans currently available in the state. These substantially more affordable plans will soon be available through the new Health Insurance Marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act. 

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The San Francisco Giants visited the White House today to celebrate winning the 2012 World Series championship, their second in three years.

President Obama welcomed the team back to Washington and congratulated them – celebrating their resilience throughout the season. “This team faced elimination a total of six times in the playoffs,” the President said. “It’s no wonder that your own fans still refer to Giants baseball as torture.”

The President also highlighted a Giants’ initiative close to First Lady Michelle Obama’s heart – encouraging healthy eating.

“I’m proud to announce that next season they’re planning to turn the centerfield bleachers at AT&T Park into what’s believed to be the first ever edible garden in a major American sports facility. With rows of kale and strawberries and eggplant, the Giants are going to help encourage local youth to eat healthy — even at the ballpark.”

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