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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBarack Obama’s Long Game,A month of victories has transformed the President’s second term.
Barack Obama is not a modest man, but when it comes to assessing his or any presidents place in the long American story, he has been heard to say, We just try to get our paragraph right. Yet the way a raft of recent events have broken sharply in his favor, Obama suddenly seems well on his way to writing a whole pageor at least a big, fat passagein the history books.
From the Supreme Court decisions upholding his signature health care plan and the right of gay Americans to marry, to contested passage of fast track trade authority, the opening of normal diplomatic relations with Cuba and an international agreement to curtail Irans nuclear weapons program, Obama is on a policy and political roll that would have seem unimaginable to many in Washington only a few months ago.
Obama may be singular as a president, not only because of his striking background, says Kenneth Adelman, who was Ronald Reagans arms control negotiator with the Soviets three decades ago, and who has his doubts about the Iran deal. It may turn out that unlike virtually any other president, his second term is actually better than his first.
Rallying his cabinet in January in the wake of the Democratic Partys decisive defeat in last falls midterm elections, Obama himself maintained, Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. This president has always been something of a clutch player, but his command of recent eventsfrom his soaring eulogy for the victims of the Charleston church massacre, to his commutation of more sentences for non-violent criminal offenders than any president since Franklin Rooseveltgoes a good way toward proving the prescience of his words.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/barack-obamas-long-game-120259.html#ixzz3gA6Bn900
Spazito
(50,477 posts)and is doing it with dignity, humor and amazing accomplishments.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)brentspeak
(18,290 posts)And Obama is doing it with such amazing dignity. And humor too -- I'm sure there's a joke hidden in there somewhere:
A Little Slavery and Some Mass Graves Wont Deter Obama From the TPP
Posted on Jul 12, 2015
After the Obama administration and congressional Republicans failed last month to delete from the controversial trade deal language banning trade with countries on a State Department human trafficking list, the president appears to have simply reclassified an offending nation.
That nation is Malaysia. The Nations Washington editor George Zornick reports that the country is home to many outsourcing companies that are, in reality, professional slaving operations: foreign workers, often refugees fleeing desperate situations in nearby countries like Burma, are recruited to the country with the promise of legitimate work but then subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. The State Department and international human rights groups have routinely concluded the Malaysian government does very little to inhibit the traffickers operation.
"Senator Robert Menendez inserted language into the Senate version of fast-track prohibiting the use of fast-track for a trade deal with a Tier 3 country, presumably with an eye on Malaysia. The Obama administration and Republican leaders in the House tried to have the language removed but were unable to excise it due to the complicated path the fast-track bill took through Congress.
Observers were then unsure what would happen next. Would Malaysia be thrown out of the deal? Would the United States lean hard on the Malaysian government to crack down on human traffickers so it could sign the trade deal? Was there any chance fast track would be disengaged for the TPP?
Instead, the Obama administration appears to have chosen another path that has shocked the human-rights community: It will simply reclassify Malaysia. Reuters has reported that when the Trafficking in Persons report comes out next week, Malaysia will no longer be a Tier 3 country.
There is essentially zero evidence Malaysia has done anything to earn this reclassification. Just two months ago, police found 139 mass graves along the Malaysian border that contained migrant workers that had been trafficked or held for ransom."
The broad concern, Zornick writes, is that the move suggests the administration isnt serious about enforcing other areas of fast track and the TPP when it comes to other human-rights, environmental, or labor standards.
Spazito
(50,477 posts)Major fail.
brentspeak
(18,290 posts)Spazito
(50,477 posts)It's really easy and is better than a lame attempt to hijack another thread instead.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)is pro slavery.
"I'm sure there's a joke hidden in there somewhere"
I'll bet you are.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)Like when he extended the uber rich's tax give aways for 2 years with his lame duck congress. He also gave us at the same time 1 year of tax breaks for everyone else and 1 year of extended unemployment. He always disguises his big FUs with smaller liberal successes. It's so his base doesn't totally abandon him and he can pretend to be a liberal.
I mean the TPP and Fast Track authority for the next president too is sooooooo neoconish, so destructive, so kissing the feet of the rich white oligarchs and pissing on liberals that anything after that would look liberal by mere comparison.
Obama is always playing off his base. In tiny little minuscule baby steps we get some kind of health insurance reform but then with adult like strides he dumps TPP on us. I will never forgive him for fast track, all the other "free" trade deals or the coming middle class killer TPP.
All the other stuff will probably be forgotten, but those awful trade deals, fast track authority for the next president and TPP are horrors that keep on giving for decades and decades.
JI7
(89,271 posts)Which is mainly minorities , young people and single women
fasttense
(17,301 posts)He comes off as a likable, smart, cool guy, unlike Trump, Mitt and other RepubliCONS in congress. So it's hard to disapprove of the destructive trade deals he's done, the anti-Union meme he promotes, the pro tax cuts for the rich while offering austerity for the rest of us neocon ideals he pushes. Then he throws us liberals a bone now and then with pro LGBT, and immigration.
Didn't most of the RepubliCON base love the bushes too, at least until he left office? At least the bushes were doing RepubliCONS things. If he had only been more liberal, he would have pushed the country to the liberal side instead it gets more and more RepubliCON.
Rockyj
(538 posts)doesn't outweigh allowing drilling oil in Artic, not taking a solid stance against Keystone XL, and now TTP!
snooper2
(30,151 posts)GOBAMA!
Stellar
(5,644 posts)I still love Obama, fool that I am.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Not as important to him as lighting up the WH with rainbows. Sorry, I'm no longer a fan.
LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)of federal workers' personal files to China. It's so trivial that his administration first hid the extent of the theft, then released the info in little fits and spurts over months so as not to overshadow the political victories. And never addressed it publicly. Obama should have done more than "accept the resignation" of a woman who was basically a politically-connected schoolteacher, he should have publicly apologized for compromising so many Americans' personal info. But no, eulogies and Amazing Grace and light shows and hand-written prison pardons are what matter. He's a decent guy, but he can't manage his way out of a paper bag even now. Nuts-and-bolts government competence still escapes him.
LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)Boo hoo
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Response to TwilightGardener (Reply #18)
Post removed
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)That was an insensitive comment I made. I'm sorry about your personal information being given to China. I hate that. It's happened to a family member and identify theft is a terrible thing.
I guess my problem with your comment is that you don't like Obama, and probably have never liked him. And if it wasn't this, you would find something else to criticize him over. I just don't buy the narrative that he has no redeeming qualities which is very popular right now with those further to the left than the POTUS or those who support him.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)schtick has finally worn me out.
Cha
(297,692 posts)But, the country appreciates him.. and that's what matters
Corey_Baker08
(2,157 posts)It's the 21st Century it's a reality. That would be like blaming President Obama for someone mugging you in the parking lot of a damn Wal-Mart.
Jesus Get Over Yourself & If You No Longer Support The President Who Is Also The Leader Of The Democratic Party Then Please Take Your Pity Party To A Different Message Board!
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Cha
(297,692 posts)YoungDemCA
(5,714 posts)Against LGBT workers.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/07/16/sexual_orientation_discrimination_at_work_eeoc_says_it_s_illegal_under_federal.html?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=55a84ee404d3014adb000001&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook
3 on the commission joined the decision, 2 did not. The 3 who joined? All appointed by President Obama.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)fadedrose
(10,044 posts)Joe Biden, for having the great fortune to see Obama up close doing all these things and writing history every day. What luck for anyone who works in the White House to be part of this great presidency....
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)N_E_1 for Tennis
(9,779 posts)bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)As various interest groups were lining up, making demands, and shouting "betrayal!" before the inauguration ball was over, I noted that everyone would just have to take number, have a seat and wait your turn.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Tarheel_Dem
(31,241 posts)ananda
(28,876 posts)I will always see his presidency as tarnished and corrupted
by the corporate oligarchy.
Cha
(297,692 posts)I don't care about those around here who are "disappointed".
mahalo su~
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)It's always nice to be told that someone doesn't care about you.
I suspect this president agrees with you too.
Which of course is where the disappointment comes in the first place, but again, you don't care.