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Barack Obama Tag

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 18, 2017 27 Comments
Assessing President Obama's legacy, the panelists on today's Morning Joe seemed in competition to outdo each other with misplaced praise. Historian David Maraniss led off, calling Obama "the Jackie Robinson of American electoral politics." Next up was Joe Scarborough, who upped the ante by placing Obama in the same category as Martin Luther King, Jr. Batting clean up, Walter Isaacson hit one out of the hyperbole park, claiming that "Obama will go down as one of the great presidents we have ever had."

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 06, 2017 31 Comments
Obama's decision to designate a large area of land in Utah as a national monument generated a small number of headlines last week. What many people don't realize is that this has been going on throughout Obama's presidency and that the amount of land and water he has claimed for the federal government is massive. MRCTV reports:
Obama Seized Enough Land and Water in 8 Years to Cover Texas Three Times

Posted by David Gerstman on January 01, 2017 21 Comments
Probably the one columnist I have critiqued more than any other in my blogging career is Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman, one-time NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief, is considered The Times' go-to expert on the Middle East, globalization and environmental issues. However, when reading Friedman's columns, it's easy to see that rather than being an expert on any of these topics, he holds certain beliefs and uses all of his observations to support his deeply held beliefs. He often conveys his convictions using superficial metaphors that sound clever, but are meaningless or misleading.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 31, 2016 8 Comments
What a difference eight years makes. With few exceptions, our national media is confused and depressed about the prospect of President Donald Trump. Back in 2008 however, the media was downright giddy over the election of Obama. Some journalists even wanted George W. Bush to step aside early so Obama could be sworn in before January 20th. The Media Research Center recorded all of this for posterity:
December 15, 2008 - Must Swear In Obama Right Now “We can’t afford to waste an hour, much less a day or a week or a month. And this business of being a lame duck President and saying, you know, ‘Adios. I’m going to the ranch. I’m just not going to do very much during this period.’ We can’t afford it....We’re in possibly, possibly the biggest crisis we’ve been in since December 7, 1941, and maybe since the time of the Civil War. So, we can’t afford to have this interregnum.” — Ex-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, December 5.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 30, 2016 24 Comments
On Thursday, President Barack Obama passed sanction against Russia for allegedly interfering with our presidential election. This includes expelling 35 diplomats and closing down two compounds. Two weeks ago, Politifact ran an article to call President-elect Donald Trump a liar about his doubts on Russia and accusing Obama of not acting against Russia until after Clinton lost. On Twitter, @neontaster pointed out evidence that contradicts Politifact's "facts." It turns out, the administration has known for months about Russian involvement and did absolutely nothing because they thought Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump. No concerns about our national security because they thought their candidate would win.

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.
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