Entries by tag: obama
This is utterly brilliant. I wish I could take credit for writing it, but no.
British wit to help get you through the nightmare:
"Someone on Quora asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response.
A few things spring to mind.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
'My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Only 26% of registered voters actually voted for Trump. That 26% includes several people who are dear to me, whose thoughts and opinions I respect. The most common reason cited for their vote is hating Hillary. In most every election that I've voted in, I've voted more against someone than for. Only when I vote for 3rd party candidates can I really say I'm voting FOR someone. Both the Dems and the Reps are corrupt, and have been so for a long time. Every candidate who gains their party's nomination does so by agreeing to tow the line, to serve the corporate donors and perpetuate the corruption that has our nation's nuts in a vise. Ethical candidates will never get those nominations; they must compromise with greed. The Republicans elect dummies, actors, class clowns and now a narcissist. It's embarassing. Obama was smart and thought he coud do some good but had to quash his own ethics to serve as a Dem. He tried to do no harm and it cost him dearly.
I worry that Americans are so idiotic as to really believe Trump's denigration of the media. Our media is not perfect. They parrot each other, and stories become more simplistic and less nuanced with each repetition. Few outlets do deep investigative reporting, but some do! They will be hard at work in the years to come making sure that somebody actually understands what is going on. If you are one of those who believes that all media is corrupt and Trump's twitter feed is the source of truth, your IQ must be <85. A friend of mine recently reminded me that "half of everybody is below average", well that may be true but even the less bright can have bullshit detectors that work. I hope everybody's BS detectors are getting tuned up on this nonsense.
I also disagree with the out-freaking I hear from the Democrats. If our nation and institutions are so fragile that one demagogue can tear them completely apart, then it was never going to stand in the first place. America is an experiment, not a guarantee. Nations come and go. Species come and go. We may not be one of the longer-lived species. We have no hope of competing with cockroaches or horsetail. So lighten up already. Laws are made and repealed. Nations are created and fall. The planet is already infested with us. Ten out of ten people die. This is the way of the world, and freaking out doesn't do anyone any good. Be an activist in the resistance if it suits you, but don't have a stroke. Let's all just take a deep breath, and then a few more.
The group that I do not hear speaking up today are the once-upon-a-time small government anti-corporate libertarians. Where did you go? Why aren't you speaking up? Are you holding your nose in the back row of the Republican party? Perhaps you are simply happy that so many regulations will fall, that every bureacracy under the executive branch will be decomissioned, and that government will indeed shrink. Do you not care that the new form will be fascism? Do you not care that your fishing streams and forests full of game will be poisoned by industrial gasses and runoff? Subsistence survival gets a lot harder when the environment is destroyed. We might need those rivers for something other than kayaking.
Source: Rick Ungar "from the left" at Forbes Magazine
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/01/16/here-are-the-23-executive-orders-on-gun-safety-signed-today-by-the-president/
President Obama has signed 23 executive orders designed to address the problem of gun violence in America. The following are the items addressed:
Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions:
1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make itwidely available to law enforcement.
11. Nominate an ATF director.
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effectiveuse of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to developinnovative technologies.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
It does not appear that any of the executive orders would have any impact on the guns people currently own-or would like to purchase- and that all proposals regarding limiting the availability of assault weapons or large ammunition magazines will be proposed for Congressional action. As such, any potential effort to create a constitutional crisis—or the leveling of charges that the White House has overstepped its executive authority—would hold no validity.
President Obama certainly inherited a mess in the Middle East. But his foreign policy has never broken decisively with the fatal conceit of the Bush administration: that America has the final and decisive say on the nature of the regimes in the Middle East. Obama has kept the imperial premise of American politics, without the will to commit the strength needed to actually make them effective.
-Michael Brandon Dougherty 11/3/15
http://theweek.com/articles/586515/obamas-catastrophic-syria-folly
Those who hate Obama for his skin are not political creatures. They do vote, and host radio shows, but in they do not make sense or generate policy. All they do is upset everybody, stop policy and new ideas from being developed. We need to shut them up by ignoring them, instead of trying to beat them in rational argument. There is no point arguing with racism or insanity.
There are Tea Party libertarians who are political, intelligent and curious, and interested in shades of meaning without regard for shades of skin tone. These are the Tea Party core that most liberals haven't met, and won't meet, because their experience has been so bad trying to negotiate with the angry racists. There is a rational case for small government, for making the government operate according to the constitution, for the separation of church and state and for making corporations behave like responsible businesses instead of being "persons" with rights but no responsibilities under the law. These concerns need to be discussed and rationally balanced with our desire to take care of the less fortunate among us, instead of dismissed as rantings.
So I beg of you, Americans, to do your best to listen to and respect the other side, whoever they are. I beg liberals to consider that there might be real concerns about the longterm viability of large government. And I beg Tea Party conservatives to offer reasons, to be specific and soften your words when you despise something that Obama has done. It is my conviction that Obama is sympathetic to the libertarian position, but because he is a politician and elected as a Democrat, he must play the game within the parameters of his position or be removed. It has cost him dearly. It will be interesting to see what our first brown-skinned president does after his 2nd term ends and he is free to act on his real inclinations.
- Current Mood:focussed
He's trying so hard. Obama is reaching out to all sides, working to encourage Americans of every stripe to admit that we have something in common, to accept that our shared interests can be promoted by our government. He has many good points. Unfortunately, the people who most need to hear this message are guaranteed not to hear him. The easiest way to maintain a dogmatic or extremist position, is to completely avoid all other inputs. It is possible for a person to sit there and hear the sounds of the speech, but to tune out entirely inside, to hear only the internally entrenched brainwashed messages of whatever pundit or preacher has had most impact. If only we could get all Americans, congress included, to admit that there is importance to every geniune concern that comes to the table. At least Obama knows it. He is the most impressive moderate I have yet to witness in the US presidency.
No, Virginia, there is not a Santa Claus, except in marketing and the media and in your imagination.
Earlier this week I attended a training on how to facilitate support groups for people who experience Extreme States, including hearing voices, seeing visions, and other experiences most commonly diagnosed as psychosis. We broke out many times into small groups to practice what we were learning. One time, when I was facilitating a small group, one of the women in the group started freaking a little bit and asking "Is she real?" of another person in the room. I calmly reassured her that yes, indeed, that person was real as far as I could tell.
This clip reminds me of that. This reality check is for the Republicans who thought that their version of reality was going to triumph on Tuesday. For a while I stopped listening to Rachel because I have libertarian sympathies and she was taking unfair potshots from a very partisan position. This time she's not being partisan. This time she's speaking about the basics of reality, of what is our consensual truth, except for a few tone-deaf and science-ignorant Republicans who have poisoned their entire party.
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