Barack Obama | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 8
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Barack Obama Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 30, 2016 20 Comments
Oh, Russia. President Vladimir Putin remains the biggest troll in the world. Of course the Kremlin promised retaliation against America after President Barack Obama slammed them with new sanctions for allegedly trying to interfere with our presidential election. The sanctions included expelling 35 diplomats and their families and closing down two Russian compounds. Putin claimed he would do the same, but backed off and decided to take a road to help renew American-Russian relations. (Yeah right!)

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 28, 2016 30 Comments
Then why did Barack Obama get so many things so wrong? That's the question that inescapably arises in response to the claim by NBC correspondent Chris Jansing on today's Morning Joe that Obama's decision-making style is "very professorial, thoughtful, in-depth." Jansing said that Obama and Trump "could not be more different in the way they approach problem solving," describing Obama admin concerns about Trump's supposed "shoot-from-the-hip" style. Mike Barnicle weighed in to wonder whether Trump would be up to the task of comforting the nation after tragedies such as the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 26, 2016 16 Comments
In 2007, I could have sworn President Barack Obama was supposed to be the savior of the Democrat Party. The smooth talking, suave Illinois senator had everything to bring the party together and end any GOP dominance. Well, it turns out, the Democrats have lost 1,030 seats across the board since Obama took office in January 2008. This includes seats in state's houses and senates, governorships, and Congress.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 26, 2016 32 Comments
CNN's presidential historian Douglas Brinkley this morning accused Donald Trump of "big-mouthing" President Obama by speaking out on policy issues during the transition. Co-host Poppy Harlow had teed Brinkely up to slam Trump, worrying that Trump had flouted the "one president at a time" tradition, and fretting that by doing so Trump was "confusing our allies and our adversaries. Brinkley was only too happy to run with the ball, responding: "I think it's very wrong-minded of Donald Trump to be doing this . . . what you don't want to do is to be big-mouthing and big-footing a sitting president . . . . I find it troubling, but I'm not going to be able to stop him from doing it."

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 22, 2016 23 Comments
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama invoked a provision of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands act, a law from 1953, that allowed him to place "a permanent drilling ban on portions of the ocean floor from Virginia to Maine and along much of Alaska's coast." Overall, it adds up to almost 120 million acres! No other president has used this provision to protect such a large part of federal waters before and he promised not even President-elect Donald Trump could undo this declaration. But Alaska lawmakers Sen. Dan Sullivan, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Rep. Dan Young said they want to find a way to draft legislation to overturn Obama's actions:
"The sweeping withdrawal disrespects the Alaskan people, is not based on sound science, and contradicts the administration's own conclusions about Arctic development," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young said late Tuesday. "It will have lasting consequences for Alaska's economy, state finances, and the security and competitiveness of the nation. In making the decision, President Obama yet again sided with extreme environmentalists, while betraying his utter lack of commitment to improving the lives of the people who actually live in the Arctic."

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 19, 2016 21 Comments
PRECIOUS! During an interview with NPR, President Barack Obama advised president-elect Donald Trump not to abuse the executive orders privilege:
Should President-elect Trump, once he's inaugurated, use his executive powers in the same way that you have? I think that he is entirely within his lawful power to do so. Keep in mind though that my strong preference has always been to legislate when I can get legislation done. In my first two years, I wasn't relying on executive powers, because I had big majorities in the Congress and we were able to get bills done, get bills passed. And even after we lost the majorities in Congress, I bent over backwards consistently to try to find compromise and a legislative solution to some of the big problems that we've got — a classic example being immigration reform, where I held off for years in taking some of the executive actions that I ultimately took in pursuit of a bipartisan solution — one that, by the way, did pass through the Senate on a bipartisan basis with our help.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 19, 2016 11 Comments
White House staffers placed four snowmen in the Rose Garden for Christmas decorations, but a few decided to use them as pranks on President Barack Obama after he called them creepy:
In an Instagram post this weekend, Souza showed a snowman decoration looking in on Obama through a window in the Oval office. Many online saw the photo and commented the snowman looked as if it were stalking the president. In the post, Souza explained it was part of a prank.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 19, 2016 32 Comments
Shades of "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" . . . On today's Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle claimed that Barack Obama had a "great, outstanding" presidency, "with a few minor ripples like Syria." So the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, traceable to Obama's abandonment of his red line, is a "minor ripple?" How callous can Barnicle be? And as bad as was Obama's failure on Syria, it is just one of a string of fiascos at his feet, from the rise of ISIS, to Iran, Libya, and on the domestic front, a record number of people out of work and on food stamps, and the slowest recovery in modern history.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 01, 2016 7 Comments
With President-elect Donald Trump a month away from taking the White House, President Barack Obama's administration has put pressure on Cuba's regime to make deals with GE and Google for the companies to operate on the island:
White House officials are unsure how Mr. Trump, the president-elect, will approach Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy. He has said he would reverse the effort to build relations, and this week wrote on Twitter that “if Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 30, 2016 13 Comments
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden received praise when they said neither one would attend the funeral of Cuba's oppressive dictator Fidel Castro. It was too good to be true. It seems Obama used a loophole to avoid sending a U.S. delegation to the funeral...by sending two U.S. officials. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated that Obama will send Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and acting U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Jeffrey DeLaurentis. Despite them being U.S. officials, it is not considered an official U.S. delegation "because the president did not abide by the formal process for naming a delegation." Oh, but it's totally okay because Rhodes planned on traveling to Cuba this week anyway.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 28, 2016 17 Comments
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has announced that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will not attend the funeral for Cuba's oppressive murderous dictator Fidel Castro, who died this weekend:
In an effort to halt a series of questions about the potential attendance of various individual government officials, Earnest would confirm only that the president and vice president would not travel to Cuba for the funeral service. He pointedly refused to rule out that Secretary of State John Kerry would attend, but would not confirm his attendance, either.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 21, 2016 26 Comments
Recently, there has been one bright spot for me remaining a California resident: The sheer entertainment value offered by the dramatic response of our leading politicians to President-elect Trump. For example, our state's representatives are lining up to work actively against our new President. The apparent goal is to make California to Trump what Texas was to Obama.
In the early morning hours after Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States, California Senate leader Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon were on the phone grappling with what comes next.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 21, 2016 42 Comments
President Barack Obama has said that he will not constantly criticize President-elect Donald Trump once they transition, but he will speak up if a certain situation arises:
"As an American citizen who cares deeply about our country, if there are issues that have less to do with the specifics of some legislative proposal or battle or go to core questions about our values and ideals, and if I think that it's necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, I'll examine it when it comes," Obama told reporters.

Posted by New Neo on November 20, 2016 19 Comments
There's long been speculation about what President Obama will be doing after January 20, 2017. Much of it has centered around ideas connected with the international scene, particularly the UN and the post of Secretary-General. But by custom, that position has never been filled by anyone who is a citizen of a Security Council nation, so it's a career trajectory that's highly unlikely for Obama. What's more, about a month ago Obama himself expressed some thoughts on the subject of his plans. To understand what he might have been referring to, it helps to take a look at the results of the Obama years, not on the international level but at the local level of the states. During Obama's presidency, the Republicans have pretty much taken over at the state level, as this chart illustrates:

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 10, 2016 18 Comments
President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama met at the White House for around 90 minutes to discuss transition of power. Trump called Obama a very good man and hopes to work with him in the future, while Obama called the meeting excellent:
Obama said the two men talked about foreign policy and domestic policy and said he was encouraged by Trump's interest in working together during the transition. "As I said last night, my No. 1 priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our President-elect is successful," Obama said.