With 18 days left of the Obama presidency, the lookbacks begin. And Chief White House photographer offers up some entertaining candid pics of the President at play.
Obama Unplugged
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
With 18 days left of the Obama presidency, the lookbacks begin. And Chief White House photographer offers up some entertaining candid pics of the President at play.
the guardian:
Barack Obama on Sunday used Twitter, a medium notoriously favoured by the man who will succeed him in the White House, to tout his achievements in office.
“As we look ahead to the future,” Obama wrote in his first tweet, “I wanted to take a moment to look back on the remarkable progress that you made possible these past [eight] years.”
[….]
“Facing the worst financial crisis in 80 years,” he wrote, “you delivered the longest streak of job growth in our history.
“After decades of rising healthcare costs, today nearly every American now has access to the financial security of affordable healthcare.”
The latter tweet spoke to a key concern among Democrats, as Trump and Republicans in Congress consider ways to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
Obama is reportedly arranging a meeting with congressional Democrats to consider ways to preserve his signature legislative achievement.
The president’s next tweet hinted at progressive fears over Trump’s nomination of a number of climate change deniers to key positions in his cabinet.
Obama continued: “We traded foreign oil for clean energy, we doubled fuel efficiency standards [and] we acted on a global scale to save the one planet we’ve got.”
He added: “We brought home more of our troops [and] strengthened US leadership– leading with diplomacy [and] partnering with nations to meet global problems.”
Obama also said: “From realizing marriage equality to removing barriers to opportunity, we’ve made history in our work to reaffirm that all are created equal.”
In conclusion, the president tweeted: “It’s been the privilege of my life to serve as your president. I look forward to standing with you as a citizen. Happy New Year everybody.”
The Resolute Desk.
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
– From “Northwest Passage” by the late Stan Rogers
Listening to npr, hearing that Pelosi is patient enough to let voters figure out the differences between the Parties & will wait for them to eventually return (to the Democratic Party.)
Years ago I would take my Gram to the Doctor’s office & while trapped in the waiting room I would be overcome by the sting of BenGay emanating from the other patients, all sitting there, waiting, waiting …. each successive visit I noticed fewer of these faces.
There’s a reason that memory came back to me as I listened to Pelosi.
Time for a little fresh air. Literally.
well, sjwny, you’ll get your wish for the “fresh air” starting tomorrow according to wapo:
When the 115th Congress begins this week, with Republicans firmly in charge of the House and Senate, much of that legislation will form the basis of the most ambitious conservative policy agenda since the 1920s. And rather than a Democratic president standing in the way, a soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump seems ready to sign much of it into law.
Healthcare is more of a mess than ever. The ACA also negatively impacted those of us with insurance policies through our employer that are, sadly, ACA-compliant pieces of crap.
Foreign policy is a mess. Obama did not close Gitmo, as he promised.
Obama pushed something he falsely branded, “clean coal.”
He is in spin doctor-mode. His tweets are self-serving garbage.
blame for the unseemly state of things in critterville should fall more on mitch’s shoulders rather than nancy’s. too bad few recognized his intransigency which not only hobbled the country but in effect unseated a president before his term was up. at least wonkette in the usual colorful terms holds him accountable and awards him “legislative sh*t-muffin of 2016”
“Obama did not close Gitmo, as he promised.”
bid, he tried again and again but the critters said no. at least it looks like he’ll have whittled the number down to about 50. that’s somewhat down don’t you think from the 558 originally listed in 2006? why aren’t you blaming the gopers for this?
bid, foreign policy? how soon you forget what the world thought of u.s. under dubya.
healthcare? a few million folks are getting it now that weren’t covered prior to aca (and don’t forget the pre-condition group for starters)
tweets are self-serving garbage? and the twit’s are gospel by this calculation.
Blue
You are in Texas. I am in Washington. My healthcare costs between Medicare deduction from social security and United Healthcare premium is $170 a month. In addition I have copays for $10 for primary care and $50 for specialists. I do have additional my share 20% costs for tests and procedures, but those are limited by law. It’s not cheap, particularly when you live on Social Security. The healthcare itself is out of this world with easy access, medical personnel and hospital facilities. It is of course ACA compliant.
At what point do you ask if the fault in your insurance isn’t the ACA but rather with your employer, the facilities available or the State and whether they are doing their part to reduce your costs? As I understand it, Texas has fought the ACA tooth and nail while WA has been fully compliant. There has been some cut back on the number of lower cost policies offered by fewer companies, but that’s about it.
This is why so many of us want a national healthcare system rather than a state by state structure. The ACA is the first time something that has been a goal since Truman is finally out in the world. It is a Christmas Tree of political shenanigans, but at least it exists. There were bound to be problems particularly in the face of recalcitrant Republicans almost doing somersaults to screw it up any way they could. It is a beginning if they don’t destroy it now. There is a small chance the US will actually join the rest of the developed world and provide basic healthcare as a right of their citizens. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Facts of Life
bid, you don’t have to worry about Obama’s clean coal initiative anymore. looks like the twit is going to scrap it and return to dirty coal policy.
btw, it is a relief to find out not all gopers are batsh*t crazy
from bbcnews: Donald Trump makes top Republican fear environmental future
Details of Mr Trump’s climate policy are not yet clear, but his team have talked about boosting coal, opening new oil pipelines, and allowing mining on public wilderness or drilling in the Arctic.
On the political side, they have suggested quitting the global climate deal, scrapping President Obama’s clean power plan, and dismantling the US energy department along with the EPA itself.
Ms Todd Whitman was interviewed on Trump’s likely policies for a documentary – Climate Change: the Trump Card – which airs on BBC Radio 4 at 20:00 on Tuesday.
She said: “I find it very worrisome that there seems to be a disdain for the science on protecting the environment.
“I worry terribly for the future of my family and families round the world because Mother Nature has never observed geopolitical boundaries and what one country does really does affect another country.
“To walk away from something where you have 97% of scientists saying this is occurring and people have an impact on it … it’s gotten to the point where we’ve got to try to slow it down if we’re going to survive it.”
She argued that Mr Trump was betraying a Republican heritage of conservation. George Bush Snr signed the UN Framework Convention in Rio in 1992. Abraham Lincoln, she remarked, was the first president to protect public land and Richard Nixon established the EPA.
“Conservation is inherently conservative,” she said. “I hope to be proven wrong by Mr Trump but you have so many multi-millionaires from the oil industry in his Cabinet.
“We want to have power and be energy independent but the problem is doing it in a balanced way to protect health and the environment. But from Trump’s view it doesn’t seem to enter the equation.”
In California ACA has a positive impact. More people signing up then ever. I know many people who have gotten health care who weren’t getting it before. Maybe the blame for failure of individual issues is with something other than the ACA maybe the employers who cheaped out or the state for failing in its responsibilities.
So you think Obamacare is a disaster? Here’s how California is proving you wrong
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obamacare-california-model-20161007-snap-story.html
Funny how well the ACA works if you live in a state that embraced it as opposed to a state that refused to do so. Had my first experience with WA health care just recently it was excellent.
regardless of what happens to the ACA, states that are providing good access and good outcomes will continue to do so. Those that have been sub standard will continue to be just that with or without Obamacare. Truth be told , they never wanted to be anything else.
I suspect that congressional town halls will become very interesting before long.
No ACA, no medi-care, and privatized social security.
New bumper sticker, “I’m on social security, and I vote!”
Happy New Year!!!
More “bad Obama” bullshit.
Obama’s “clean coal” initiative is inaptly named. It is actually carbon capture technology that the O administration invested billions of dollars into developing. So long as coal remains a major source of electricity, regardless of the name, carbon capture is the only responsible approach to cleaning up the atmosphere with respect to coal, which by the way has taken hold in China.
Obama sought to close Gitmo by legislation and executive order but was blocked by a chicken shit congress. He may have promised more than he could deliver, but he tried to do what he promised through the 2 options available to him. Blame Congress. Obama did reduce the population at Gitmo from about 220 to 40 prisoners.
Foreign policy is in a mess? Compared to what it was 8 years ago – and what it is going to by under the Tangerine Dream? I call bullshit.
Obamacare insured 30 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance before its passage and set standards prohibiting junk health insurance policies that paid for nothing. Health care costs (direct and indirect) have risen less under Obama than anytime in the past 58 years (6.1% in 1961, about 5.5% in 1995, about 8.5% in 2003 and about 3.5% in 2013) – health insurance costs have not followed that 13 year drop in health care costs. Its failings were that it didn’t set limits on health insurance premium increases or prohibit the bloodsucking insurers from profiteering off the drop in health care costs. And do complain to your employer – it likely fixed its share of health insurance premium expenditures and passed the unwarranted increases the bloodsucking insurance companies have required on to you.
Watched the movie Eye in the Sky last night. Just a so, so movie really.
That said, it was hard to watch, without thinking that that kind of power and those types of assets would soon be in the hands of one Donald J. Trump.
If “God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America” he better start soon.
Please feel free to accoicate me with Pogo’s remarks above. Spot on!?
If knowledge of Science is important, Trump University would have offered, no, required students have knowledge in that area.
Trump U explored the science of suckers with check books
Transfer of the remaining prisoners at Gitmo to the Conus is politically impossible unless those people are placed in supermax. Doing that would be in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions as they are not convicted criminals, but prisoners of war. As no other signatory of the Conventions wants them, we are stuck keeping them in the POW facility at Gitmo.
Sandwiched as it were between a shrub and a cheeto, Obama is going to look very good going foreward.
Okay Jace. That is funny 🙂
Even Shrub will benefit
gallup: Many in U.S. Skeptical Trump Can Handle Presidential Duties
As Donald Trump prepares to take the presidential oath on Jan. 20, less than half of Americans are confident in his ability to handle an international crisis (46%), to use military force wisely (47%) or to prevent major scandals in his administration (44%). At least seven in 10 Americans were confident in Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in these areas before they took office.
[….]
…Trump prepares to take office with a majority of Americans viewing him unfavorably. Trump is also much less well-liked than any recent president-elect.
As such, the public is much less confident in Trump than in his predecessors to handle several of a president’s major tasks, including dealing with challenging foreign policy matters such as handling an international crisis or using U.S. military force.
also from gallup as reported dec. 30th:
U.S. Global Image Remains Strong Among Major World Powers: Since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the image of the U.S. has been relatively strong worldwide. The same is true as Obama prepares to leave office. For the third consecutive year in 2015, the leadership of the U.S. earned the highest approval rating among five major global powers.
nytimes:
HONOLULU — President Obama will give a farewell address next week from Chicago, his hometown, most likely his last chance to defend his legacy directly to the country before Donald J. Trump is sworn in, the White House announced on Monday.
The address is set for the evening of Jan. 10 at McCormick Place, a hulking convention center overlooking Lake Michigan. In an email to supporters, Mr. Obama said the speech would give him “a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you’ve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.”
[….]
Mr. Obama, mindful that his two terms in office will now be assessed in the context of his predecessors, cited the history of farewell addresses in his email message.
“In 1796, as George Washington set the precedent for a peaceful, democratic transfer of power, he also set a precedent by penning a farewell address to the American people,” Mr. Obama said. “And over the 220 years since, many American presidents have followed his lead.”
“Since 2009, we’ve faced our fair share of challenges, and come through them stronger,’’ he wrote. “That’s because we have never let go of a belief that has guided us ever since our founding — our conviction that, together, we can change this country for the better.”
He added: “So I hope you’ll join me one last time. Because, for me, it’s always been about you.”
Jace – for most of us Obama looks good as a president and with the VI and the Orange Lunatic as bookends he will be looked at as very good. But, the far right consider him the worst president ever. They say he is a liar and traitor. They wanted him impeached, for what I cannot comprehend. I do not know how much of that is racist, but I think a considerable amount is. They turn livid and sputter with spittle flying and cannot put a sentence together when pressed about the man. I think he has done a good job. The shame is the first few years when he continued giving the game away because he wanted to run the government in a reasonable manner, even after the Republicans screwed him over several times.
“he wanted to run the government in a reasonable manner”
alas the age of reason is long gone
Kenneth Roberts also notably wrote of the Nortwest Passage.
masterful stories from that guy
BB, it drives them absolutely mad–the knowledge that the O’Bamas are superior to them by every tangible and intangible measure. And they will have that same knowledge at the end of Trump’s term of office, however long that might last, until he resigns.
patd,
I loathe what the Republicans have done since …… pick a date, any date. A pox on anyone who obstructs government from either Party.
Waiting around for folks to “come home” is not a strategy. It’s sad, it’s old, it’s tired. It’s also why non-affiliateds like me stay non-affiliated & this designation is gaining favor among new voters. The Democratic Party needs people like me to help them win. You would think the last election would have gobsmacked them into reality….. but…. no. Whatever they do in the future they will forever be stained, branded as The Overconfident Geniuses Who Lost To Trump. Pelosi was part of this “brain trust”. Unless the Dems show that they understand the new reality, cultivate future voters, I fear they will be on the outside looking in for more than four years. I suspect if the President-Elect exhibits even a smidgen of success he & his minions will be ruling the roost for a while. They “got” what the 2016 electorate was about – as long as they play to this audience, the Show goes on. I do not welcome this outcome at all. I truly don’t. Awful.
Speaking of the “knowledge of Science,” does this help explain the 2016 election?
Science study: Republicans struggle with evolution, Democrats struggle with the Earth going around the Sun
By Jim Lindgren, Washington Post, February 25, 2014
Only 32 percent of Republicans believe in evolution. And most Democrats (51 percent) don’t know both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that it takes a year to do so.
These are just some of the findings that emerge from a closer analysis of the underlying data in the new National Science Foundation Study. A lot has been written about the drop in the proportion of Americans (55 percent) who think that astrology is “not at all scientific” and about the 26 percent of the population who don’t know that the Earth goes around the Sun. Yet what has entirely escaped comment are some more interesting findings that can be gleaned only from crunching the numbers.
1. The Earth goes around the Sun and it takes a year to do so
In the NSF study, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago asked:
Now, does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? [EARTHSUN]
That would seem to be an easy question, and if you didn’t know the answer, there was a 50-50 chance of guessing it right anyway. Yet only 74 percent got that one correct.
For those who did answer correctly, a follow-up question was asked:
How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year? [SOLARREV]
The question is a multiple choice one, and there is a 33 percent probability of guessing the right answer. In the 2012 survey, only a bare majority of adults were able to answer both questions correctly: 55 percent of adult Americans responded both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that it takes a year for that to occur.
More disturbingly, in 2012 a majority of Democrats (51 percent) could not correctly answer both that the Earth goes around the Sun and that this takes a year. Republicans fare a bit better, with only 38 percent failing to get both correct.
As with astrology questions, conservative Republicans fare the best (67 percent correct on both questions), followed on this issue by Republicans overall (62 percent correct) and liberal Democrats (62 percent correct).
At the bottom are non-liberal Democrats—conservative Democrats (27 percent correct) and moderate Democrats (44 percent correct). For the full political breakdown, see Table 6 in “Who Believes That Astrology is Scientific?” The margin of error for the party and political orientation groups is 3.3-4.0 percent, while the margin of error for the four combination subgroups just mentioned is 4.5-7.8 percent.
Oh, purple-in-tampa, what percentage of Republican/Democratic hierarchy believe they are the sun & the rest of us mere satellites in their orbit?
I kid, I kid.
Maybe.
Blue Bronc,
I thought Obama did well for the most part and sorry to see him go.
My only criticism of him might be that he waited far too long to decide republicans were pricks and act accordingly. I will not judge him for what might have been but rather what is. All in all he did rather well and just as important he was never ever an embarrassment to either the country or to the office. That goes a long way with me.
Please associate me with Jace & Sturg’s comments. I spit on my phone reading them. ?
And sj, THAT was kidding? With the sun king about to be coronated? ?