By Hanlon, on June 28th, 2010 at 03:51 PM
Awesome article by The Daily Beast. It’s important to keep stuff like this in mind.
have you noticed that when it comes to actual policy, he keeps racking up the wins? This week it was financial-regulatory reform. One can argue about whether the bill the Senate passed will truly change the way Wall Street operates, but off the top of your head, can you name a more significant piece of progressive legislation signed by either of the last two Democratic presidents? Neither can I. And that goes for Obama’s stimulus package and his health-care reform as well. All of which means that, legislatively at least, Obama has exceeded in 18 months what Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter achieved in a combined 12 years. By summer’s end, he’ll also have shepherded two young liberal justices on to the Supreme Court.
Even on the foreign-policy front, Obama has been meeting with success. He’s gotten Beijing to revalue its currency, which has been a goal of America’s China policy hands for several administrations now. He’s gotten China and Russia to back new United Nations sanctions against Iran, and he’s dramatically improved relations between Washington and Moscow, drawing Russia closer to the West and further from China, which once looked like its emerging strategic partner.
We made this mistake during the Bush era as well, putting all of our focus on the more prominent and headline-grabbing stories, while ignoring all the machinations beneath the surface (Katrina got way too much attention, for example, even from me). No matter how pissed we get at Obama for failing here and there, keep an eye on these things.
By Hanlon, on June 16th, 2010 at 10:41 AM
By Hanlon, on May 25th, 2010 at 10:35 PM
By Hanlon, on May 24th, 2010 at 05:56 PM
FOX edits applause out of an Obama speech.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h61vrbxfw1k[/youtube]
I have a theory about FOX and their ilk. For years, they interpreted any criticism of the president, even valid ones, as partisan attacks and belligerence. Thus, in an attempt to “fight fire with fire”, they’re launching partisan attacks and belligerence at the president.
By Hanlon, on April 22nd, 2010 at 11:41 AM
 Let’s draw an analogy. Think of the United States and Israel’s relationship as that between a parent and a child. The USA is basically Israel’s entire support structure in that area of the world. The amount of aid the US pumps into little old Israel is staggering: billions per year. That’s just direct aid, let’s not forget the stance that the United States takes as protector of the Holy Land.
Over the years, the policy of the United States has been “Israel can do no wrong”. To continue with our analogy, we’ve watched our kid in the playground, making sure no one plays too rough with him while turning a blind eye toward the scraped knees and bruises that he’s dishing out towards all the other children.
Now, kids become acclimated to the amount of “rope” they get. If a kid rarely gets toys outside of holidays, then getting a video game just for doing well in school is a special thing. If a kid gets new junk every weekend, not getting anything one time is going to cause a temper tantrum. And so, to drive the analogy home, we have Israel rejecting Obama’s calls for the halting of building in east Jerusalem, showing that they just are not used to the word “stop”.
Here’s the crux of the matter:
Both sides lay claim to the holy city, and Israel does not consider building there to be a settlement activity.The international community does not view East Jerusalem as legally Israel’s.
Of course they don’t see it as settlement activity. The Zionist-types out there (note: I am not talking about “the Jews”) see Israel in its entirety as theirs, and so doing whatever the hell they want obviously doesn’t strike them as a problem. After all, it’s theirs. All those damn Muslims are doing is dirtying up the country that God himself promised to them. Sure, they may not take it over in a war, but they’re gonna creep along, and until now the United States has been okay with that.
But, like a child used to always getting their way, they’re throwing a tantrum in response to finally being given a “no”. Now we’re going to see the relationship strain, and likely the charges that Obama is siding with the Muslims will redouble. Fun times ahead.
By Hanlon, on April 15th, 2010 at 07:08 PM
 That number is correct, by the way. One point eight million dollars in federal taxes. I’m not sure it’s possible for most people to understand just what that’s like, since the majority of us get steamed over a few grand (and rightly so, I suppose). But you don’t see Obama trying to fly planes into the IRS building, do you?
The bulk of the president’s income comes from the continuing sales of his books, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, according to the White House statement.
The Obamas also reported paying $163,303 in Illinois state income taxes for 2009.
Last year, the Obamas paid $855,323 in federal income tax, as well as $77,883 in state income taxes. They reported an adjusted gross income of $2,656,902 for the year 2008, again mostly through book sales.
Meanwhile, we’ve got asshole Teabaggers whining and crying, despite the fact that every single one of them who earns less than $250,000 per year will see their taxes go down this year.
The reality that every Tea Partyer who earns less than $250,000 annually is receiving a tax cut of two percent seems to be obscured in the minds of many protesters. (Among the Tea Partyers, only 2 percent realize that during the administration taxes have decreased for most Americans — 44 percent believe taxes have gone up, according to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll.) Fortunately, a new coalition is determined to counter the confusion with the truth about “The Other 95%” of us who are happy we got a tax cut from Obama this year.
This is the idiocy I’m talking about.
Now there is a fair point to be made, which is that sure it’s great that Obama is dropping taxes on the lower chunks of our class spectrum, but he’s raising it on the higher; doesn’t that mean that Obama is punishing hard work and success? For that, to be honest, I just defer to that quote from Spider Man: With great power comes great responsibility. Any Americans who earn oodles of cash have done so thanks to the opportunities and structures of the United States, so it’s only fair to chip in and say thanks.
Enjoy your April 15th, folks.
By Hanlon, on April 7th, 2010 at 06:04 PM
Yes. Yes he did.
It’s like Obama wants to balance out every awesome act with something incredibly shitty.
By Hanlon, on April 1st, 2010 at 11:41 PM
 That’s what Daniel Gross over at Slate is saying, and he has a point. Despite my absolute revulsion toward the term “ObamaCare”, Gross’s reasoning is pretty sound, and if you want to talk about sealing himself as a Lincoln-esque president, Obama would be hard pressed to one-up appointing one of his potential presidential opponents to such a high position. For that matter, it’d be a good move for Mittens.
Consider his bio. Romney has worked as a management consultant, started a successful venture capital firm (Bain & Co.), restructured and turned around the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and ran the state of Massachusetts for four years.
…
And of course, there is the thing that disqualifies him from being the Republican nominee in 2012, which is the same thing that makes him best qualified for the job of health-care czar: He’s basically already done it. In fact, he’s the only executive who has done it. As countless commentators have noted (Alex Knepper from the right, Brad DeLong from the left, and David Frum from the spurned right), Obamacare largely is Romneycare. The concept of attaining near-universal health insurance in a defined geographic area using a combination of a mandate, subsidies, and cost-control efforts is essentially what Romney did in Massachusetts earlier this decade. (Here’s some video of Romney talking about an individual mandate as a conservative plan.)
No doubt, one of the biggest problems Romney ran into was trying to prove to the hardliners that he was a “true” conservative. Unfortunately, Mitt is a Republican in the sense that Blue Dogs are Democrats; he’s a Republican in friggin’ Massachusetts. It’s like being a gangster in a suburban neighborhood or a liberal on FOX, that label wouldn’t fly anywhere else.
So we were treated to watching Romney attempt to explain how he’d hold up the kind of Texan “blue collar” neocon values despite his previous pro-choice stance and how he led the union’s poster child for universal health care (a mantra for a little while was “look at Massachusetts, it can work!). In terms of right-wing credentials, Mitt’s got no real chance. With the Tea Party reigning high, someone like Romney has a snowball’s chance in hell of making a dent in the field.
Would it ever happen? Naw, but it definitely would make sense.
By Hanlon, on March 15th, 2010 at 05:31 PM
 When I read the opening paragraph of this Washington Post story concerning Obama’s changes to No Child Left Behind, I admit it sounded a little bizarre. I’d been hearing rumblings about these changes and the story seemed to suggest that it would be uneven.
For most public schools, the perceived heavy hand of the federal government would become a lighter touch under President Obama’s plan to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law. But for others, the consequences of academic failure would stiffen considerably.
Really? He’d be gentler on some schools and harsher on others? Why? What’s wrong with the others?
Let’s take a look see.
Education Department officials said 5 percent of the lowest-performing schools would face radical interventions, including replacing the principal in nearly all cases. Those are tougher remedies than current law provides. The next-lowest 5 percent would be placed on watch lists and forced to take major steps. Another 5 percent with wide gaps in achievement between disadvantaged and better-off students would face interventions.
Oh I see. So, in fact, it isn’t “some” schools that face harsher consequences for academic failure, they all do. If any school drops into those lower echelons then they face harsh penalties. That sounds downright fair to me, and it seems like no schools will be treated differently at all.
Now, I think NCLB has somewhere between ten and a million flaws to it, but painting the changes as affecting schools “differently” implies that the changes aren’t merit based. I mean, if a retail store decided that the lowest-performing 5% of employees would face harsh penalties, I don’t think anyone would say “why are we getting treated differently?” The answer’s kinda obvious: you don’t want the penalties, ya gotta do better.
By Hanlon, on March 12th, 2010 at 09:54 AM
Glenn Greenwald:
Identically, we now have Obama trying to explain why civilian trials and closing GITMO are so necessary and just at exactly the same time he sets up military commissions and systems of indefinite detention. He tries to explain why transparency in releasing OLC memos is so vital at the same time he guts FOIA to allow the concealment of torture photos and blocks courts from adjudicating the lawsuits from torture and eavesdropping victims, etc. etc. It’s not nuanced, smart or “pragmatic”; it’s craven, unprincipled, cynical and weak.
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