Category Archives: President Obama

SOTU: With Malice Toward Some

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President Obama used his last State of the Union address to decry divisiveness he helped instigate. [Credit: CNN]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma used his last State of the Union address to decry divi­sive­ness he helped insti­gate. [Cred­it: CNN]

Com­plet­ing his sev­enth year as the world’s most pow­er­ful politi­cian, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma used his final State of the Union address to tell us what is wrong with pol­i­tics: his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Obamacare And The Daughters of (40% Less) Charity

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The President last week professed his love -- appropriately chaste, of course -- for Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association and tireless Obamacare advocate. [Credit: Wikipedia]

The Pres­i­dent last week pro­fessed his love — appro­pri­ate and chaste, of course — for Sis­ter Car­ol Kee­han, pres­i­dent of the Catholic Health Asso­ci­a­tion and tire­less Oba­macare advo­cate. [Cred­it: Wikipedia]

I just love nuns gen­er­al­ly.  I’m just say­ing.  – Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, June 9

And nuns just love him too.  At least nuns who run hos­pi­tals seem to.  And with good rea­son: the Pres­i­dent advo­cates poli­cies that enable hos­pi­tals like those oper­at­ed by the Daugh­ters of Char­i­ty to pro­vide less char­i­ty.  Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Applying Selma’s Moral Clarity To Iran

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President Obama's address on the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march contained moral clarity that is lacking in his negotiations with Tehran. [Credit: ABC News]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s address on the 50th anniver­sary of the Sel­ma to Mont­gomery march con­tained moral clar­i­ty that is miss­ing from his nego­ti­a­tions with Tehran. [Cred­it: ABC News]

Amer­i­ca is not some frag­ile thing.  We are large, in the words of Whit­man, con­tain­ing mul­ti­tudes.  We are bois­ter­ous and diverse and full of ener­gy, per­pet­u­al­ly young in spir­it. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, March 7, 2015, Sel­ma, Alabama

The days when the Jew­ish peo­ple remained pas­sive in the face of geno­ci­dal ene­mies, those days are over….Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu, March 3, 2015, Wash­ing­ton.

Two speech­es, deliv­ered just four days apart, remind­ed us how lead­ers can moti­vate and inspire, stir our pas­sions and call us to great things.  Most of all, they can bring moral clar­i­ty to the com­plex real­i­ties of a messy world. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

If Obama Were President

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The mammone -- a jobless man in his 20s, 30s or 40s who lives with mamma -- is an Italian tradition. But under President Obama, labor force participation rates of young men have plunged to Italian levels. [Credit: studenti.it]

The mam­mone — a job­less man in his 20s, 30s or 40s who lives with mam­ma — is an Ital­ian tra­di­tion. Under Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion rates of young Amer­i­can men have plunged to Ital­ian lev­els. [Cred­it: studenti.it]

In Italy, they call him a mam­mone: an unem­ployed man in his 20s, 30s or 40s who still lives with mamma.

The preva­lence of the mam­mone has long been thought to be a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Ital­ian phe­nom­e­non, with deep cul­tur­al roots.  It has grown more pro­nounced with the country’s recent eco­nom­ic dis­tress.  Since 2008, a grow­ing per­cent­age of Ital­ian men aged 25–54 have aban­doned the labor force, no longer both­er­ing even to look for work.

Italy’s work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate among men of prime work­ing age is by far Europe’s low­est.  But it is not the low­est in the devel­oped world.  Italy now shares that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion with the U.S.

That wouldn’t hap­pen if Oba­ma were Pres­i­dent. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

How Cutting Jobless Benefits Cut Joblessness

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During his December 2013 Hawaiian vacation, President Obama phoned lawmakers, asking them to extend unemployment benefits. They did not. Which is a good thing, according to a new study published by NBER. [Credit: Fox News]

Dur­ing his Decem­ber 2013 Hawai­ian vaca­tion, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma phoned law­mak­ers, ask­ing them to extend unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits. They did not. Which is a good thing, accord­ing to a new study pub­lished by NBER. [Cred­it: Fox News]

A lit­tle more than a year ago, the Pres­i­dent was dis­tressed.  It was a few days after Christ­mas 2013, and extend­ed unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits for 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple were about to expire.  In a typ­i­cal­ly per­func­to­ry lob­by­ing effort, he called two Sen­a­tors to urge them to move a bill to pre­serve the benefits.

To recov­er from his exer­tions, he and his fam­i­ly then “ven­tured to the white-sand beach at Bel­lows Air Force Sta­tion, which is on the wind­ward side of the island of Oahu and fea­tures turquoise water and a stun­ning view of the Moku­lua Islands,” the Wash­ing­ton Post reported.

That tran­quil scene augured the best year for U.S. employ­ment growth since 1999.   Accord­ing to the Labor Depart­ment, the econ­o­my added more than 3.1 mil­lion jobs in 2014.  The topline unem­ploy­ment rate was 5.6% in Decem­ber, down from 6.7% the pri­or Decem­ber and the low­est rate since June 2008.

And here is the sur­pris­ing major rea­son for the resur­gence in employ­ment: Con­gress spurned the President’s entreaties and let extend­ed unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits expire. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

“Episodes,” Hollywood And Reverend Al

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Season 4 of "Episodes," premieres tonight, a funny, smart and dead-on satire of Hollywood. [Credit: Showtime]

Sea­son 4 of “Episodes,” pre­mieres tonight, a fun­ny, smart and dead-on satire of Hol­ly­wood. [Cred­it: Showtime]

MATT LEBLANC’S EX-WIFE: You were arrest­ed for dri­ving drunk with our kids in the car!

LEBLANC: Yeah, well, when you say it that way, it sounds terrible.

Scene from Sea­son 3 of “Episodes”

The fourth sea­son of “Episodes” pre­mieres tonight on Show­time, promis­ing anoth­er sump­tu­ous feast of Hol­ly­wood send-ups. David Crane’s (“Friends,” “Joey”) hand­i­work has it all: self-obsessed actors, self-impor­tant exec­u­tives, mawk­ish phoni­ness and blood­less betray­als, all set among ubiq­ui­tous lies and decep­tions.  Crane’s satire is pitch-per­fect: over­drawn enough to be fun­ny, but real enough to be (almost) true. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

The President, His Critics And the Politics of Impatience

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What do these two men have in common? More than you might think. [Credit: Politico]

What do these two men have in com­mon? More than you might think. [Cred­it: Politico]

“But what I’m not going to do is just wait.  I think it’s fair to say that I’ve shown a lot of patience…But what we can’t do is just keep on wait­ing.”  Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Novem­ber 5, 2014

The Con­sti­tu­tion offers no rem­e­dy for pres­i­den­tial impa­tience. Pres­i­dents, Mem­bers of Con­gress and judges are some­times con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to “just keep on wait­ing.”  And that is some­thing office­hold­ers of both polit­i­cal par­ties seem increas­ing­ly unwill­ing to do.  When it comes to cir­cum­vent­ing the rules to achieve the polit­i­cal objec­tives of the moment, the Pres­i­dent and some of his most stri­dent con­ser­v­a­tive foes are soulmates.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Iraq: In Search Of An Organizing Principle

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The President has decided to fight jihadists threatening to kill Yazidis with bombs instead of hashtags. But it's not clear why. [Credit: Business Insider]

Sun­ni rad­i­cals are threat­en­ing to mas­sacre an obscure eth­nore­li­gious group known as Yazidis.  The Pres­i­dent has decid­ed to fight the jihadists with bombs instead of hash­tags. But it’s not clear why. [Cred­it: Busi­ness Insider]

“Great nations need orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples, and ‘Don’t do stu­pid stuff’ is not an orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple.” For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton.

Anoth­er August.  Anoth­er flir­ta­tion with war.  In the psy­chodra­ma that is the Oba­ma Pres­i­den­cy, our hero vac­il­lates between war and peace, detach­ment and inter­ven­tion, rid­ing out the storm and steer­ing into its teeth.  The rest of us are left to guess whether he will respond to the next human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis with bombs or hash­tags.  There is, as Mrs. Clin­ton notes, no “orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple” to lend coher­ence to our for­eign pol­i­cy. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

President Bush Not To Blame For This Iraq Crisis

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Iraq appears on the verge of civil war and some blame former President George W. Bush. Here's why they're wrong. [Credit: al Jazeera America]

Iraq appears on the verge of civ­il war and some blame for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Here’s why they’re wrong. [Cred­it: al Jazeera America]

The Iraq civ­il war did not start under Oba­ma, it start­ed when Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons pulled the trig­ger to invade Iraq … . It was [the] sta­tus of force agree­ment, signed by Bush, that pledged to with­draw all US forces … Giv­en the stag­ger­ing cost of expense and lives we could not stay there “maybe a hun­dred years” as McCain said. Nor could we bleed hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars there every year. Oba­ma promised to get us out of there, and he right­ly did so … To attempt to blame any­one but Bush, Cheney and the neo­cons for the Iraq dis­as­ter is sim­ply revi­sion­ism at its finest. —  Excerpt­ed from a comment on my recent post on Iraq.

The Oba­ma presidency’s lead­ing malfea­sance lies in its belief that find­ing some­one to blame for a prob­lem is as good as solv­ing it.  So it is lit­tle sur­prise that my recent post on Iraq, in which I argued against US mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, would spur com­ments that for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush is to blame for the renewed fight­ing. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Student Loans: Punishing People Who Play By The Rules

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President Obama believes that requiring student loans to be repaid is punishing good behavior. [Credit: NPR]

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma believes that requir­ing stu­dent loans to be repaid is pun­ish­ing good behav­ior. [Cred­it: NPR]

“If some­body plays by the rules, they shouldn’t be pun­ished for it.” — Pres­i­dent Obama

The Pres­i­dent made this inar­guable state­ment in the course of pro­claim­ing a change in the law gov­ern­ing stu­dent loans.  Hence­forth, mil­lions of peo­ple who bor­rowed for col­lege will have their month­ly pay­ments restruc­tured and, in some cas­es, be entire­ly relieved of the oblig­a­tion to repay their debt.

In the President’s mind, bor­row­ing mon­ey is play­ing by the rules; pay­ing it back is pun­ish­ment. Con­tin­ue read­ing →