Again, an excerpt from Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece on Barack Obama’s foreign policy: During the peak of the protests in Iran, Jared Cohen, a young staffer at the State Department who worked for Slaughter, contacted officials at Twitter and … Continue reading →
From this New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza: The two most influential foreign-policy advisers in the White House are Thomas Donilon, the national-security adviser, and Denis McDonough, a deputy national-security adviser. Donilon, who is fifty-five, is a longtime Washington lawyer, … Continue reading →
It began early in the Obama campaign. The way it went was this: Obama would make predictions about his opponents and insinuate their criticism of him would inevitably have racist roots (they’ll say “he doesn’t look like all those other … Continue reading →
Racism is so hard to find these days that it must be embedded, hidden, covert, indirect—that is, “coded.” So of course Donald Trump—who is many things, including a self-serving, narcissistic, publicity-hound—is of course a coded racist for questioning Barack Obama’s … Continue reading →
Well, Trump smoked it out: Obama’s long birth certificate finally sees the light of day. Why did it take so long? Simple. Prior to this, Obama felt that secrecy was to his advantage. The controversy merely made his foes look … Continue reading →
Commenter “Daniel in Brookline” calls Trump a gadfly. It’s a word I’ve thought of often in connection with him and the Obama presidency, one that was originally used by Socrates to describe himself. Here’s an explanation of what Socrates meant … Continue reading →
A lot of attention was paid recently to Obama’s display of pique at interviewer Brad Watson, who had the temerity to ask the president a couple of slightly challenging questions on Monday. But far more interesting to me was another … Continue reading →
The NY Times features an article by Janny Scott, who’s written a book about Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham. The article focuses on her sojourn with her son in Indonesia, occurring when Obama was 6 to 10 years old, and … Continue reading →
…it’s that it’s still so high. But the latest poll shows further erosion among a group he must win in order to have a second term: independents. His support among them is only 35%. The only problem for Republicans is … Continue reading →
I am truly puzzled. In this article by economist Laurence Kotlikoff, he criticizes Obama’s budget speech although he’s an Obama supporter. He thinks Obama offered no proposals of his own, and he thinks Paul Ryan’s approach to Medicare is pretty … Continue reading →
This response of Obama’s to a Stephanopoulos question indicates that he knows a good opportunity for ridicule of birthers when he hears one: I think a problem for [birther-candidates such as Trump] when they want to actually run in a … Continue reading →
I didn’t watch Obma’s speech last night. Fortunately, I was busy doing other—and more pleasant—things. But from the reports I see, I don’t think anyone was pleased with it, left or right, with the exception of a few of the … Continue reading →