Barack Obama Tag

“Listen,” Briard replied, “we cannot blame newspapers that already suffer much difficulty in getting published and distributed in totalitarian regimes for not publishing a cartoon that could get them at best jail, at worst death.” “But,” he said, “I’m quite critical of newspapers published in democratic countries. This cartoon is not just a little figure — a little Muhammad — it’s a symbol of freedom of speech, of freedom of religion, of freedom of democracy and secularism. It is this symbol that they refuse to publish.” “What they must understand,” Briard continued, “is that when they blur it out — when they decline to publish it — they blur out democracy, secularism, freedom of religion, and they insult the citizenship.”

The president’s address is intended to lay out an agenda for his final two years in office and help the Democratic Party retain the White House in the 2016 election with a legacy of policies that appeal to middle- and lower-income voters, who continued to lose ground as the economy rebounded from the recession. He would increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 28 percent from 23.8 percent. The rate was 15 percent when Obama took office in 2009, meaning that he’s proposing to almost double it over his two terms in office. He would also impose capital-gains taxes on asset transfers at death, ending what the White House calls “the largest capital gains loophole.” Under current law, assets held until death aren’t subject to those levies, creating an incentive for wealthy people to hold onto them. Heirs only have to pay capital-gains taxes when they sell and only on the value above what the assets were worth at death.

Everything Is Awesome! Good news! The U.S. economy grew at a rollicking 5 percent rate in the third quarter. Oh, and it added 320,000 jobs in November, the best of its unprecedented 57 straight months of private-sector employment growth. Just in time for Christmas, the Dow just hit an all-time high and the uninsured rate is approaching an all-time low. Consumer confidence is soaring, inflation is low, gas prices are plunging, and the budget deficit is shrinking. You no longer hear much about the Ebola crisis that dominated the headlines in the fall, much less the border crisis that dominated the headlines over the summer. As Fox News host Andrea Tantaros proclaimed earlier this month: “The United States is awesome! We are awesome!” OK, she was talking about the Senate torture report, not the state of the union, but things in the U.S. do look rather awesome. Mitt Romney promised to bring unemployment down to 6 percent in his first term; it’s already down to 5.8 percent, half the struggling eurozone’s rate. Newt Gingrich promised $2.50 gas; it’s down to $2.38. Crime, abortion, teen pregnancy and oil imports are also way down, while renewable power is way up and the American auto industry is booming again. You don’t have to give credit to President Barack Obama for “America’s resurgence,” as he has started calling it, but there’s overwhelming evidence the resurgence is real.

Liberalism n’existe pas — and almost everybody knows it. It is completely out of ideas. Obama was the last gasp of a dying ideology. All they have left is some pathetic and teetering identity politics. That is why the Democratic Party was so flummoxed over the last few days over the words of their stalwart Chuck Schumer, when he criticized the risibly titled Affordable Care Act. The New York senator said his party (and Obama clearly), rather than trying to reform healthcare, should have concentrated on improving the state of the middle class. But crucially, Schumer didn’t say how. That’s because in his ideology, there is no more how. It’s all been tried and shown to be useless or, worse, destructive of the people it pretends to be helping. At this point, we no longer need Gertrude Stein to tell us there’s no there there.