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All Hail … “Obama the Great!”

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: February 18, 2016, 03:55:45 pm »


Mark Morford

Will Obama destroy America before it's too late?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 9:40AM PST - Wednesday, February 17, 2016

“Wave goodbye to all you hold dear!” he's surely thinking, with an evil gleam, on his way to totally annihilating America, any second now.
“Wave goodbye to all you hold dear!” he's surely thinking, with an evil gleam, on his way to totally annihilating America, any second now.

AMERICA! Something is amiss. We are in the final throes of a desperate situation, and the numbers just aren't adding up. What can be done?

The facts are almost too dreadful to discuss: No matter how you slice it, spin it, or openly lie about it like Ted Cruz on a ketamine bender, it's become officially impossible to find any true and tangible evidence that President Obama — AKA Kenyan Comrade Nazi Socialist Obama — has utterly destroyed America, as promised.

Worse still, there is very little time left. The months are ticking away until Obama leaves office and becomes something altogether more terrifying: One of the most effective, lauded, sought-after ex-presidents in American history, next to Bill Clinton. Calamitous!

Ergo, the question is getting more urgent by the day: Can he still do it? Is there enough time for President Obama to undo all the undeniable improvements and socioeconomic progress that President Obama hath wrought? Let us pray.

The signs, regrettably, are not good. Unemployment just hit an eight-year low, down to 4.9 percent. Wages are (finally) ticking up, keeping better pace with all the new jobs, another 150,000 in January alone, officially joining Obama's nauseating string of 71 straight months of consecutive job growth.

That's downright shameful. Reports suggest the economy is so robust, many people are actually quitting their jobs, confident they will easily find another, thanks to the Obama-led economic recovery. Dude must be mortified.

It gets worse. It turns out the Affordable Care Act, which every Right-wing politician and pundit, bar none, swore on his mother's dead Medicare would devastate the economy and cause what was already the worst, most expensive, least effective health care system in the modern world to implode completely, has instead added another 13 million to the roster of the newly insured, most of them younger people.

Uglier still? Minimal adverse effects. It's doing pretty great, actually. Insurance companies have not collapsed. Rates, for most, have been dinged only mildly. Doctors are not jumping out of windows. And of course, millions now have insurance who would otherwise have been prevented from getting it before, and you can't be turned down for pre-existing conditions, and… oh, hell, you know the rest. Blah blah blah, good news many improvements everybody's mostly pretty happy.


Enough! America simply CANNOT HANDLE any more positive, encouraging words, or charts, or irrefutable pieces of evidence pointing to the strength and health of our economic recovery overall. End our pain now, Lord Obama!
Enough! America simply CANNOT HANDLE any more positive, encouraging words, or charts, or irrefutable pieces of evidence
pointing to the strength and health of our economic recovery overall. End our pain now, Lord Obama!


He's laughing because he's duped everyone into thinking the economy is strong and the world sort of likes us again and we're actually flourishing rather well, considering. It's a trap!
He's laughing because he's duped everyone into thinking the economy is strong and the world sort of likes us again and we're
actually flourishing rather well, considering. It's a trap!


Praying for our fiery destruction, obviously.
Praying for our fiery destruction, obviously.

Fools!

Perhaps a bit of gratitude is in order? Because truly, it could have been a lot worse. What if those early liberal visions for true health care overhaul — single-payer, for example — hadn't been so brutally beaten down by the Right? What if real reform had taken place? Or, for that matter, real environmental legislation? What if the GOP and the late Justice Scalia weren't so helpfully, openly partisan and grossly obstructionist?

Disaster, that's what. Pharmaceutical lobbyists would almost certainly be less obscenely powerful. Exxon's donations to GOP SuperPACs would slump. Hospital executives would struggle to buy a third Range Rover. Ghastly!

So I ask again, with extra ominousness: Why aren't we suffering more? Why aren't the vast majority of Americans far worse off? I mean, is this it? When will this nightmare of imperfect growth, recovery and undeniably improved overall health finally end?

Look, it's been nearly eight years. The mellow intellectual socialist black dude has had forever to make good on the GOP's fanatical demand that he ruin the nation and impregnate their terrified white daughters. Shouldn't the rich be much less rich? Shouldn't the stock market have collapsed by now?

Why is America's standing in the world so much better than a decade ago? Why are gay people so goddamn happy? Why are women becoming increasingly powerful and omnipresent? Why is the Republican party mocked and derided the world over? What happened to the ruinous supremacy of the Angry White Christian Male?

The answer, of course, is obvious: You've been duped.

Don't you get it? Everything is actually far worse than it seems. There are no jobs. You are not healthy. Your stock portfolio has not exploded in the past decade. CNN Money is lying when it says “Obama is shaping up to be one of the best presidents for the stock market in modern history, even with the recent pullback in 2016.” It is not likely you reading this column right now on a beautiful, technologically marvelous digital device paid for, in sum, by the overall economic recovery. North is actually south. Progress is actually failure. Women and black people and Muslims and immigrants are actually destroying the country.


The face of evil. The website of horror. The harbinger of our imminent destruction. Obviously.
The face of evil. The website of horror. The harbinger of our imminent destruction. Obviously.

All part of a monstrous liberal hoax, you see, this “recovery”, this “robust economy”, this “historic resurgence”, exactly like climate science and organic bananas, electric cars and feminism. Don't you see?

Here's the real truth: We are, each of us, floating inside a strange, mystical eight-year Obamabubble made of thoughtful rejoinders, Zen-like calm and effortless three-pointers from the perimeter. It's a bubble that's about to pop any second to reveal that the Dow is really at 3,000, ISIS has taken over the Freedom Tower and we've all been speaking German and just didn't realize it.

It's the only way to explain it. How else to vindicate the curdled Republican Establishment, every member of which has been so egregiously, so laughably wrong, and so consistently, for eight years straight? How to excuse the fact that every one of them has been promising us the exact same thing: a face-melting Obamacalypse, any second now?

And yet… nothing. Just the opposite, in fact. The poor dears.

Surely, some underwhelming charts exist. If you tweak the metric a little, unemployment isn't all that great — it's only, uh, moderately great. And many of those new jobs cited by the DOL are low-wage and service sector. And employment participation rates aren't quite as strong as they could be. So, you know, take that.

Also, military spending is actually up. And the truth is, Obama's health care reform is pretty weak on the actual reform: Insurance companies are still making billions. Big Pharma has never been so powerful. Most hospitals are still for-profit. Wall Street could not be more happily cold-blooded.

Wait, isn't that good news? Obama's policies have only made the rich richer, the military machine more bloated, the stock market explode, oil companies mostly quite happy? I'm getting confused.

But never mind that now. Because it appears Obama hasn't given up just yet.


Shut up, facts.
Shut up, facts.

Behold, his administration's final, $4.1 trillion budget. It's packed to the brim with all sorts of nation-killing initiatives, soul-destroying taxes and hope-obliterating spending plans, a gruesome pile of mostly good ideas, a few fairly lousy ones and a handful of truly great ones that, should some of them actually make it through, would almost certainly leave the country much better off… all by destroying us completely.

Typical.

Good luck, Mr. President! We're all pulling for you. You monster.


Email: Mark Morford

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http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/02/17/will-obama-destroy-america-before-its-too-late
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« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2016, 10:18:38 pm »


from The Washington Post....

For Obama's final correspondents' dinner,
the obvious targets: Trump, Cruz and himself


By PAUL FARHI | 11:18PM - Saturday, April 30, 2016

President Obama speaks at the correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. — Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
President Obama speaks at the correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. — Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.

IN his final performance as stand-up comedy's commander in chief, President Obama shticked the landing at Saturday's annual White House correspondents' dinner, cracking wise about the election, his waning days as president and, of course, Donald Trump.

“The Republican establishment is incredulous [trump] is the nominee,” joked the president during his monologue before 2,600 dinner-goers at the Washington Hilton. “Incredulous. They say he lacks foreign policy experience. But he's been meeting foreign leaders: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan.”

Trump would succeed in closing the federal prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, the president said, “because he knows a thing or two about running waterfront properties into the ground.”

Noting that former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was at the dinner, Obama compared him to Trump, another New York billionaire. Bloomberg “knows policy in depth and he's actually worth the amount of money he says he is,” said Obama, drawing ooohs from the crowd.

Turning on himself, Obama said: “I do apologize that I was a little late tonight. I was running on CPT [colored people's time] — which stands for jokes that white people should not make.

“This is my eighth and final appearance and I am excited. If this material works well, I'm going to use it at Goldman Sachs next year [and] earn me some serious Tubmans.”

He added, “Next year someone else will be standing in this spot. And its anyone's guess who she will be.”

He noted that on his recent trip to Great Britain, he had lunch with the Queen, saw a Shakespeare performance and played golf with Prime Minister David Cameron. “Just in case anyone was wondering if I'm black enough, I think that settles the debate.”

Commenting on his family's desire to finally leave the White House after two terms, Obama quipped: “Someone jumped the White House fence last week. But I have to give the Secret Service credit. They found Michelle and brought her back.

“And yet,” he added, “somehow despite all the churn, my approval ratings keep going up. The last time I was this high I was trying to decide on my major.”

Turning to the contest among those vying to replace him, the president introduced Bernie Sanders.

“Bernie, you look like a million bucks! Or to put it in terms you'll understand: 37,000 donations of $27 each.”

He cracked that Sanders's campaign slogan — “Feel the Bern” — was superior to Hillary Clinton's: “Trudge up the Hill.”

As for Trump's Republican challengers, Obama noted: “Ted [Cruz] had a tough week. He went to Indiana … and called a basketball hoop a basketball ring. What else is in his lexicon? ‘Baseball sticks’? ‘Football hats’? But sure, I'm the foreign one.”

During his two terms in office, Obama has been among the more adept at delivering his comedy monologue, an annual ritual since John F. Kennedy began the tradition at the dinner in 1962.

The event once again was a mashup of Hollywood's beautiful people, famous-for-Washington types, business executives, sports stars, military representatives and many well-connected nobodies. There were even a few actual White House correspondents.

The unusual diversity of the crowd led to some one-of-a-kind encounters. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Michelle Dockery of “Downton Abbey”, “Spotlight” actress Rachel McAdams and MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell all gathered at one pre-dinner reception. Vice President Biden sat during the dinner with Kerry and actress Helen Mirren (the vice president typically doesn't attend the dinner; it was Biden's first). At one point Biden greeted singer Gladys Knight by saying, “I am the Pip!”

During a pre-party hosted by ABC and Yahoo, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright was mobbed by fans seeking photos while actress Anna Kendrick (“Pitch Perfect”) was unnoticed off to the side.

Sanders eschewed the standard tuxedo in favor of a suit and tie. He and his wife, Jane, were guests of CBS.

Actress Carrie Fisher brought her own guest, her French bulldog Gary, who was clad in a studded collar.

Trump declined to attend this year's event, despite numerous invitations from media organizations. His eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., attended in his place.

The night's Hollywood contingent included Will Smith, Bryan Cranston, Morgan Freeman, “Harry Potter” star Emma Watson, “Homeland” and “Billions” star Damian Lewis, “Scandal” star Kerry Washington and reality TV personality Kendall Jenner. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was among the professional athletes in attendance.

The sponsoring White House Correspondents' Association saluted Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was jailed by Iranian authorities for 18 months until his release in January. Rezaian, who attended the dinner with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and brother Ali, received a standing ovation when he presented a series of journalism awards. “This is a big and intimidating room,” he told the crowd, “but it beats solitary confinement.”

The event was carried live by C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

The first dinner was held in 1921, when a group of reporters who had covered Warren G. Harding’s presidential campaign got together to fete the newly elected president.


Staff writers Helena Andrews, Jessica Contrera, Emily Heil, Maura Judkis, Roxanne Roberts, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Ben Terris and Dan Zak contributed to this report.

• Paul Farhi is The Washington Post's media reporter.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: What people wore on the red carpet to the White House correspondents' dinner

 • The best lines from Obama's White House correspondents’ dinner speech

 • The complete transcript of President Obama's 2016 White House correspondents' dinner speech

 • Larry Wilmore's harshest burns in his White House correspondents' dinner speech

 • The complete transcript of Larry Wilmore's 2016 White House correspondents' dinner speech

 • How Helen Mirren won the White House correspondents' dinner — before it even started

 • Barack Obama, the first alt-comedy president

 • The single best joke told by every president, from Obama to Washington

 • The night the White House upstaged White House correspondents' weekend

 • I sat next to Donald Trump at the infamous 2011 White House correspondents' dinner


https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-obamas-final-correspondents-dinner-the-obvious-targets-trump-cruz-and-himself/2016/04/30/7c77d3e0-0f2e-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html
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« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2016, 03:38:51 am »

Obama a great teleprompter reader and bullshit artist has helped america become the most indebted nation in the history of the planet

I believe the us is about to get flushed down the toilet and it's economy should  crash by the end of this month.

Time will tell.



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« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2016, 09:12:57 pm »


Mark Morford

Obama's memoirs are going to be extraordinary

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 4:34PM PDT - Monday, October 03, 2016

Miss him yet? Don't worry, you will.
Miss him yet? Don't worry, you will.

DON'T take my word for it: Read through Jonathan Chait's marvelous 5 Days That Shaped a Presidency over in New York Magazine, and then click to Vanity Fair's latest, wherein Obama chats fluently about the arc and churn of American history with the Pulitzer-winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. And then go back and re-read The Obama Doctrine from The Atlantic a few months back, among other fascinating, provocative articles and interviews, and be reminded of three things:

1. This is one of the most articulate, thoughtful presidents in modern American history, able to effortlessly examine, extrapolate and personally reflect upon multiple facets of the global political miasma and his administration's place in it, all with equal parts candor, ease and beautifully measured deliberation.

2. Despite eight solid years of ruthless, acidic, racist-soaked antagonism from the GOP and the far right, Obama's graciousness, humanity and intellectual curiosity remain blessedly — if more warily — intact, as does his unique combination of humility and pride in what he's managed to accomplish. The fact he's maintained such composure and equanimity, even an excellent sense of humor, where most of us would have imploded with furious exasperation years ago, is beyond estimable. Hillary's tenacity and smarts are world-class. But we will not see anyone quite like Obama in the White House again for some time.

3. I hereby predict Obama's future memoirs — New York Mag deems the Chait piece “a very early preview” — will outsell Bill Clinton's autobiography, which was a blockbuster, selling well over 2 million copies. But it won't be for the reasons you think. It won't dish dirt on the Tea Party, or Mitch McConnell's shriveled soul, or the cretinous trolls of the NRA, et al. There will be no sex and scandal and bloopers. It will offer something far more appealing: The chance to spend time in the company a singular mind. The chance to learn from one of the best ever.


Get ready for Obama in more of a funky globe-trotting dad mode.
Get ready for Obama in more of a funky globe-trotting dad mode.

A bit grayer, a lot more wary, but still as gracious and intellectually astute as ever.
A bit grayer, a lot more wary, but still as gracious and intellectually astute as ever.

They simply don’t come much more thoughtful, reflective or conscious of his place in the arc of history.
They simply don’t come much more thoughtful, reflective or conscious of his place
in the arc of history.


Do not misunderstand. This is no liberal excuse-making for his administration's mistakes and flawed policies. Nor does it give him a free pass for some of the more egregious, disquieting issues that plague his presidency, from the much-loathed drone program to ominous privacy/surveillance laws, his odd generosity with oil drilling permits to the fact that, under his administration, we expanded our role as the biggest arms dealer in the world. I fully expect him to write as powerfully, if not more so, about his mistakes and regrets as his accomplishments and successes.

But there is no such thing as a perfect president, or flawless agenda. It's disingenuous to cherry pick a pet issue and then claim that no one deserves to be called “extraordinary” if he or she can't stop all global horrors, or allows civilian deaths to occur, or corporations to retain too much power, despite how many of these issues are beyond his reach to fix, and/or many of his efforts were blocked outright by the GOP, over and over again. Obama never claimed to a pacifist, though he has done more than most to discourage military action, encourage diplomacy and bring about tremendous good in the country and the world.

This is America he's leading, after all. We have long been the No.1 warmonger/aggressor on the planet. Interventionism in service of “protecting our interests” is what we do. To judge Obama independent of this often ugly metric is unfair. He must remain in the often harsh context of the American experiment — violence, peacemaking, at all.

But that largely sidesteps the essential point, which is clear enough: We have never had a president quite like this, of such intellectual acumen, principled grace and genuine warmth. Bill Clinton had a brilliant political mind, but an infamously sloppy moral center. G.W. Bush was a disgrace on multiple levels, and his memoirs are full of crayon drawings and Dick Cheney's bloody fingerprints.

Obama's presidency, by contrast, is as close to baggage-free as they come. He's saddled with an almost unprecedented lack of megalomania, or disquieting scandal, damning personal anxiety or disturbing ethical glitch. Policies and decisions you disagree with are one thing. An impeccable record of integrity, classiness and moral decency in the face of historic congressional hostility and outright bigotry and racism is quite another. And that goes for his remarkable wife and kids, too.


Poor Michelle, all those terrible scandals and boozing around and drugs and sex and… oh wait. She has none of that. She's been impeccable and rather awesome.
Poor Michelle, all those terrible scandals and boozing around and drugs and sex
and… oh wait. She has none of that. She's been impeccable and rather awesome.


Historic, in so many ways.
Historic, in so many ways.

All class, every time.
All class, every time.

Here's the best news of all: Obama is only 55. While his Zen-like skill and steering our leaky ship of state will be deeply missed, we and the world will be gifted with many more years of Obama as an effective, inspiring ex-president. Obama unfettered by the hateful GOP and the constraints of title and public office? Imagine.

But oh, that memoir. I'm far from alone in my eagerness to spend time with the man's insights on the American experiment, and his experience helping reshape it and move it, however lurchingly, forward. You simply could not ask for a better guide, or finer company.


Email: Mark Morford

Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/10/03/obamas-memoirs-are-going-to-be-extraordinary
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« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2016, 10:17:37 pm »

Zeige Hail Obama

[/b]



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« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2016, 02:41:42 pm »


from The Washington Post....

President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans

President Barack Obama on Tuesday designated the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean
and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing.
Sources say U.S. and Canadian officials will reach a joint understanding on how to make
the new protections as sweeping and politically durable as possible.


By DARRYL FEARS and JULIET EILPERIN | Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer. — Photograph: Daniella Beccaria/Associated Press.
Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig
Polar Pioneer. — Photograph: Daniella Beccaria/Associated Press.


PRESIDENT OBAMA moved to solidify his environmental legacy on Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation's Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.

“These actions, and Canada's parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement. “They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region's harsh conditions is limited.

White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama's action.

“There is a precedent of more than half a century of this authority being utilized by presidents of both parties,” a White House aide said. “There is no authority for subsequent presidents to un-withdraw…. I can't speak to what a future Congress will do.”

“The U.S. is not acting alone today. Canada is acting to put an indefinite stop to activity in its waters as well,” the aide said. “With Canada, we send a powerful signal and reinforce our commitment to work together.”

David Rivkin, an attorney for the Baker and Hostetler law firm who served on the White House Counsel staffs of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, disagreed with the assertion that the decision cannot be overturned. “Basically I say the power to withdraw entails the power to un-withdraw,” Rivkin said, “especially if you determine the justification for the original withdrawal is no longer valid.”

A legal fight would likely follow, Rivkin said. But “it's not clear why Congress would want to give a president tremendous authority operating only one way.”

Senator Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas) responded sharply on Twitter: “Yet another Obama abuse of power. Hopefully, on[e] that will be reversed … exactly one month from today” after Trump's inauguration. Cruz closed his tweet with a hashtag: “Taking away Obama's pen and phone.”

U.S. and Canadian officials have negotiated for months to reach a joint understanding on how to manage adjacent areas in the ocean in an effort to make the new protections as sweeping and politically durable as possible. Meanwhile, advocacy groups lobbied Obama to ban oil and gas leasing in the Arctic entirely.

Obama already invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to safeguard Alaska's Bristol Bay in 2014, and again last year to protect part of Alaska's Arctic coast. The president has protected 125 million acres in the region in the last two years, according to a fact sheet issued by the White House.

The Beaufort and Chukchi seas are habitat for several species listed as endangered and species that are candidates for the endangered species, including the bowhead whale, fin whale, Pacific walrus and polar bear. Concern for the animals has heightened as the Arctic warms faster than anywhere else in the world and sea ice the bears use to hunt continues to melt.

The underwater canyons protected by the president cover nearly 4 million acres across the Atlantic continental shelf break, “running from Heezen Canyon offshore New England to Norfolk Canyon offshore the Chesapeake Bay,” according to a separate fact sheet.

They are widely recognized as major biodiversity hotspots that are critical to fisheries. The canyons provide deep water corals used by a wide array of fish. The area also provides habitat “for … deepwater corals, deep diving beaked whales, commercially valuable fishes, and significant numbers of habitat-forming soft and hard corals, sponges, and crabs,” the White House said.


In this May 14th, 2015, file photo, the oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer is towed toward a dock in Elliott Bay in Seattle. The rig was the first of two drilling rigs Royal Dutch Shell was outfitting for Arctic oil exploration. President Barack Obama has ordered wide swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans placed permanently off-limits for oil drilling, in an 11th-hour push for environmental protection before he leaves office. — Photograph: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press.
In this May 14th, 2015, file photo, the oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer is towed toward a dock in Elliott Bay in Seattle. The rig was the
first of two drilling rigs Royal Dutch Shell was outfitting for Arctic oil exploration. President Barack Obama has ordered wide swaths
of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans placed permanently off-limits for oil drilling, in an 11th-hour push for environmental protection
before he leaves office. — Photograph: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press.


The American Petroleum Institute denounced the decision. “The administration’s decision to remove key Arctic and Atlantic offshore areas from future leasing consideration ignores congressional intent, our national security, and vital, good-paying job opportunities for our shipyards, unions, and businesses of all types across the country,” said Erik Milito, the group's Upstream director.

“Our national security depends on our ability to produce oil and natural gas here in the United States,” Milito said. “This proposal would take us in the wrong direction just as we have become world leader in production and refining of oil and natural gas and in reduction of carbon emissions.”

Contradicting the White House's statement, Milito said George W. Bush removed previous 12-A withdrawal areas with a memorandum and made all but marine sanctuaries available for leasing. “We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision as the nation continues to need a robust strategy for developing offshore and onshore energy,” he said.

But a wide range of conservation groups hailed the decision. League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski called it “an incredible holiday gift,” saying that “an oil spill in these pristine waters would be devastating to the wildlife and people who live in the region.”

Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it “a historic victory in our fight to save our Arctic and Atlantic waters, marine life, coastal communities and all they support.” Carter Roberts, president and chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, applauded what he called “a bold decision” that “signals some places are just too important not to protect.”

Oil production in the Arctic represents a tenth of one percent of the nation's oil production overall, the White House said. The area is so sensitive and so remote that the economics of exploration is costly.

Shell, which said in September 2015 that it would shelve drilling plans after spending $7 billion and not finding significant amounts of oil, still has one remaining lease in the Chukchi Sea where it drilled a well earlier last year. Shell is also part of a joint venture with Italian oil giant ENI and Spanish firm Repsol in the Beaufort Sea that holds 13 leases.

Shell held other leases in the Beaufort Sea, which the company transferred to the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, a company belonging to the Native Americans in the region.

An earlier plan to allow limited drilling off the Atlantic coast was shelved after state governments along the southern Atlantic coasts — including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia — expressed worries over the effect on their beaches, tourist industry and environmentally sensitive marsh.

The Navy also objected. The Pentagon provided Interior with a map “that identifies locations … areas where the [Defense's] offshore readiness activities are not compatible, partially compatible or minimally impacted by oil and gas activities,” department spokesman Matthew Allen said. The map included nearly the entire proposed drilling area.

Live training exercises are conducted off the Atlantic coast, “from unit level training to major joint service and fleet exercises,” Allen said in a statement. “These live training events are fundamental to the ability of our airmen, sailors, and marines to attain and sustain the highest levels of military readiness.”

The Obama administration eventually closed the Atlantic to drilling for five years.

President-elect Donald Trump could counter Obama's plan with his own five-year plan, but even so it would be years before drilling could start.

The president-elect's authority to undo a permanent prohibition is unclear. But Congress, controlled by Republicans, could move to rescind the withdrawal of federal lands from oil and gas exploration.


• Darryl Fears has worked at The Washington Post for more than a decade, mostly as a reporter on the National staff. He currently covers the environment, focusing on the Chesapeake Bay and issues affecting wildlife.

• Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's White House bureau chief, covering domestic and foreign policy as well as the culture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is the author of two books — one on sharks, and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other — and has worked for The Post since 1998.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • VIDEO: Obama bans drilling in large parts of Atlantic and arctic oceans

 • What President Obama's executive actions mean for President Trump


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/20/president-obama-expected-to-ban-oil-drilling-in-large-areas-of-atlantic-and-arctic-oceans
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« Reply #6 on: December 27, 2016, 11:14:39 am »


from The Washington Post....

President Obama says he could have beaten Trump — Trump says ‘NO WAY!’

In an interview with friend and former adviser David Axelrod, the president said he was confident
he could have mobilized voters behind his vision “if I had run again.” President-elect Donald Trump
took exception to that, tweeting in part, “NO WAY!” Obama also made his most pointed critique of
Hillary Clinton, saying her campaign acted too cautiously thinking that a victory was all but certain.


By MICHAEL KRANISH | 5:02PM EST - Monday, December 26, 2016

President Obama said Republican strategy was to block his programs. — Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
President Obama said Republican strategy was to block his programs. — Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

PRESIDENT OBAMA said in an interview released on Monday that he could have beaten Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “if I had run again.” In his most pointed critique yet, Obama said Hillary Clinton's campaign acted too cautiously out of a mistaken belief that victory was all but certain.

“If you think you're winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer,” Obama said in the interview with former adviser and longtime friend David Axelrod, a CNN analyst, for his The Axe Files podcast. The president said Clinton “understandably … looked and said, well, given my opponent and the things he's saying and what he's doing, we should focus on that.”

Trump took exception to this critique, tweeting out later in the day that “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! —  jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”




Obama stressed his admiration for Clinton and said she had been the victim of unfair attacks. But, as he has in other exit interviews, he insisted that her defeat was not a rejection of the eight years of his presidency. To the contrary, he argued that he had put together a winning coalition that stretched across the country but that the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign had failed to follow through on it.

“I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I — if I had run again and articulated it — I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” the president said.

“See, I think the issue was less that Democrats have somehow abandoned the white working class, I think that's nonsense,” Obama said. “Look, the Affordable Care Act benefits a huge number of Trump voters. There are a lot of folks in places like West Virginia or Kentucky who didn't vote for Hillary, didn't vote for me, but are being helped by this…. The problem is, is that we're not there on the ground communicating not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities, that we're bleeding for these communities.”

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said via email that the campaign declined to comment.

Axelrod, in an interview with The Washington Post, said he believed Obama went further than he had before in critiquing Clinton's campaign.

“This was all in service of making the point that he believes that his progressive vision and the vision he ran on is still a majority view in this country,” Axelrod said. “He chooses to be hopeful about the future.”

Axelrod did not press Obama on many of the most controversial parts of his presidency, such as not taking action to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Syria. Such friendly interviews have become a hallmark of Obama's presidency, whether with friends, or comedians, or YouTube hosts. Nonetheless, the president, who has done relatively few interviews with mainstream media organizations, repeated his long-stated complaint that the media has filtered his message and that he is subject to unfair criticism by outlets such as Fox News.

Obama stressed that he doesn't plan to get involved in day-to-day responses to a Trump presidency, just as former president George W. Bush has remained mostly on the sidelines during the Obama years. But Obama made clear that he will be more of an activist in the long run. He said he plans to help mobilize and train a younger generation of Democratic leaders and will speak out if his core beliefs are challenged. He also said he is working on writing a book.

His post-presidential “long-term interest,” Obama said, is “to build that next generation of leadership; organizers, journalists, politicians. I see them in America, I see them around the world — 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who are just full of talent, full of idealism. And the question is how do we link them up? How do we give them the tools for them to bring about progressive change? And I want to use my presidential center as a mechanism for developing that next generation of talent.” He said he didn't want to be someone “who's just hanging around reliving old glories.”

Obama blamed some of his problems during his presidency on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky), a longtime adversary who famously said in 2010: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” McConnell failed in that goal, but Obama said his nemesis was successful in blocking many of his initiatives and setting the groundwork for Trump's victory.

McConnell's strategy from a “tactical perspective was pretty smart and well executed.” The Republican leader found ways to “just throw sand in the gears” in a manner that fed into people's beliefs that things were going badly. Obama said that, as a result, Republicans blocked action that could have helped more people recover from the Great Recession. The strategy, Obama maintained, was that “if we just say no, then that will puncture the balloon, that all this talk about hope and change and no red state and blue state is — is proven to be a mirage, a fantasy. And if we can — if we can puncture that vision, then we have a chance to win back seats in the House.”

A McConnell spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.


• Michael Kranish is a national political investigative reporter for The Washington Post. He is the co-author of The Post's biography, Trump Revealed, as well as biographies of John Kerry and Mitt Romney. A Washington-area native, he is also the author of Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War.

__________________________________________________________________________

More on this topic:

 • Michelle Obama gave a somber exit interview to Oprah Winfrey

 • VIDEO: Here's Obama's advice to the Democrat Party

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: See how Obama has aged during his presidency

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: What President-elect Donald Trump did on his trip to Washington


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/12/26/president-obama-says-he-would-have-beaten-trump-if-i-had-run-again
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« Reply #7 on: December 29, 2016, 03:51:47 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Obama beats Trump where it will sting:
He's the most admired man in America


Since Gallup began its poll, whoever is president or president-elect
has almost always been the person the country admired the most.
The big question is what happens next year.


By PHILIP BUMP | 10:01AM EST - Wednesday, December 28, 2016

SINCE Gallup began asking Americans the people they admired the most, there's been a consistent pattern: Whoever was president or president-elect was almost always the man the country admired the most. The most admired woman? Usually someone who had been married to a president.

Only five times has the most admired man in the country not been a president — past, current or elected. And in 2016, the trend continued, with President Obama retaining the title he's held since 2008.




For each of the past 15 years, the most admired woman has been a very particular former first lady: Hillary Clinton. Clinton has been named America's most admired woman 21 times, the most of any winner of the title. It's often been a squeaker, such as when she narrowly edged out Sarah Palin in 2009. But in 2016, as in years past, no woman has been identified as the most admired more than Clinton.



(Where two women were tied, only the woman listed first in Gallup's write-ups is shown.)

Her opponent in this year's presidential contest, though, didn't fare quite as well. Donald Trump had the most support of any second-place finisher over the past decade, but it wasn't enough to catch Obama. The percentage of the population that identifies him as the man they admire the most has consistently outpaced the field since he earned the top spot.




This news, coming at this moment, will probably be somewhat galling to Trump. Over the weekend, Obama told his former adviser David Axelrod that he believed he could have won in 2016, a claim at which Trump chafed. To lose an admiration contest in the wake of that seems as though it would be particularly frustrating to the president-elect.

It's probably a function of the popularity of each man. In 2008, Obama won the most-admired title easily, thanks to his historic election and George W. Bush's low approval ratings. In 2000, Bill Clinton topped George W. Bush, albeit barely. By 2001, Bush set a record in the polling, with 39 percent identifying him as most admired — thanks in no small part to his response to the September 11th terrorist attacks.

The big question is what happens next year. Past presidents have often won the crown of most admired, as noted above. Bill Clinton, for example, has been in the top 10 for 25 years. (Trump has made the top 10 six times, including 1988 through 1990, 2011 and last year.) Will Obama continue to be viewed as more admirable to Americans even once Trump has taken office?

One bet that's probably safe to make: Hillary Clinton will win again in 2017.


• Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix at The Washington Post. He is based in New York City.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related media:

 • VIDEO: Donald Trump's path to the presidency


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/obama-beats-trump-where-it-will-sting-hes-the-most-admired-man-in-america
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« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2017, 02:57:18 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Barack Obama built a new kind of Camelot for a new generation

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Thursday, January 19, 2017



ON election night in 2008, I took my college-age daughter and several of her friends to an election-watch event in downtown Seattle. TV network reports were projected on a huge screen and, when the presidential result was assured, the image shifted to the massive celebration in Chicago's Grant Park.

The young president-elect took the stage with his handsome family and began to deliver his victory speech. My daughter and her friends were standing behind me and, at some point, I turned to glance at them. They all had tears in their eyes, the guys included. That was the moment I fully appreciated the impact of Barack Obama's rise to the presidency.

Obama was the president for a new generation that had grown up in a multicultural America, significantly more liberated from ancient prejudices than their elders. For them, this eloquent, lanky, mixed-race man from Hawaii and the elegant black woman at his side were avatars of a better country to come, the kind of nation to which these millennials wanted to pledge allegiance.

Now, eight years later, the president who caused my daughter and her friends to cry tears of joy is passing the White House keys to someone else, someone who could not be a more polar opposite. Obama, who has proved himself to be coolheaded, articulate, inspirational, deeply analytical and nuanced, is being replaced by a man who is hot-tempered, incoherent, inflammatory, shallow and crude. What does it mean that, after Obama, the electoral system produced Donald Trump? Were the dreams of election night 2008 an illusion?

History will decide whether Obama was a great president or not, which of his policies were wise and which were wrongheaded and how much lasting change they created. Right now, it can be said he was not perfect in every action, but he was significant because of who he was. By that, I do not simply mean his singularity as the first non-white president, though that is central to the way his presidency kindled a sense of possibility among millions of Americans whose ancestors lived and toiled at the margins of a racist society. Obama's significance goes beyond the color of his skin to the content of his character.

Obama made it through two terms without a hint of personal scandal. He and Michelle were role models of the highest order. In the words of the first lady, they went high when others went low. Perhaps the reason their enemies went to such absurd lengths to concoct libels against them was that they had nothing else to work with. And, in the face of vicious slanders, Obama did not resort to bullying or score-settling. He didn't fire off tweets or make up lies about his opponents. By turns, he met every attack with stoicism, reason and wry humor.

There was a recurrent theme in Obama's oratory that reflected his refusal to think the worst about his fellow Americans, even those who thought the worst of him. From the speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 through his nomination acceptance speech in 2008 to his recent farewell address, he returned to the same aspirational vision of a nation united, whole and good. He recited, again and again, the epic saga of this country, from the Founders and the frontiersmen to the astronauts on the moon, and deftly weaved in the stories of liberated slaves, bold suffragettes, martyred civil rights workers and hardworking immigrants. He included everyone in the history of this land so that all can claim it as their own. He rejected the characterization of the country as a weak conjoining of separated parts — a black America and a white America, blue states and red states. From his first moment in the national spotlight and throughout his governing years, Obama tried to convince us there was only a United States of America.

Today, not everyone is sure he was right. The country is sharply polarized and the new Republican presidency, enabled by a Republican-controlled Congress, is pledged to undo everything Obama has done, from healthcare to caring about the health of the planet. It looks like a complete reversal of the enlightened impulses that were unleashed on election night in 2008, a rejection of the rising American generation in favor of an old guard that is rich, white and backward-looking.

We will see if this is just a temporary pause on the march toward a more perfect union or if the last eight years will be seen as a high-water mark from which we all fell into division and reactionary rule. Either way, a glow will gather around the Obama White House, much the way John F. Kennedy's tragically short presidency gained luster over time. JFK's Camelot was crystallized by the bullets of an assassin. Obama's different sort of Camelot will be defined in fond memory by the coming discord of the Trump administration.

Obama's legacy, though, may ultimately be measured by the extent to which he has inspired a new generation. Will they retreat into disillusion or bravely carry the torch forward until another Camelot comes around?


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-obama-camelot-20170119-story.html
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