Senate The 2nd Term of the Obama Administration: Facts, Opinions, and Discussions

What're they going to do?

 

It reads good at brief glance. It's merely creating overall standards and targets yet gives states flexibility to meet them.

GOP, sounds like federalism!

 

It's not good enough. Far from it. The U.S. must be much more aggressive in reducing its own GHG emissions, which would necessarily include radical changes across the board and not just pathetically modest targets (there's a reason they use 2005 levels) that affect only coal-fired power plants. We also need to push hard at Paris for the EU, Russia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia to be similarly aggressive. We don't have the necessary leadership for this and we probably never will.

 

I can't find a single mention of the word "nuclear" so epic fail for the goal.

 

President Obama to restore Mt. McKinley's name to Denali on visit to Alaska (it's the highest mountain in North America, Denali is its native name, meaning "the High One.")

Apparently Alaska changed its name back to Denali officially decades ago, but politicians in Ohio have been blocking the federal government from doing the same ever since. Why Ohio? Because it's named after Ohio politician William McKinley when its discoverer found out he won the Republican nomination in 1896 (he went on to become President).

 

Beautiful photo. I adore nature. So transcendental.

Well, I'm sure President Obama has been just as busy and stressed during his second term as he was during his first. It's amazing his hair isn't completely grey now. I wish he'd ignore ISIS and let Sunni and Shia battle it out. Doesn't involve us. The Iran deal seems good. I wish Obama would do a lot of things, but he's no longer in a position to get much of what he wants done. At least he's lost some of his obsessive-compulsive bipartisan disorder that he once had. Sadly, the president alone, while powerful, can't do many of the things we would like without Congress, and corporations and lobbyists have too much say in what politicians will strive to accomplish. Obama's last year in office will be interesting. I'm not exactly satisfied, but I don't blame him completely. I don't miss Bush. Not. At. All. I imagine Putin will try to further upset Obama. But one thing we can say about Obama is that he is nationalist enough to oppose certain people. Bin Laden and Putin never took Bush seriously, but bin Laden took Obama seriously and look what happened. Putin takes Obama seriously, and it makes him angry. That little man...

 

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/obama-turns-the-lame-duck-narrative-its-head?cid=sm_fb_maddow]Obama[/url]... no lame-duck president

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman will meet with President Obama today, and as Politico put it, the Saudi king will meet with a U.S. leader “with a swagger in his step.”​

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Nearly four months after he skipped President Barack Obama’s high-profile Camp David summit, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman will arrive at the White House to find a strengthened Obama and less leeway to influence U.S. policy toward Iran.​

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The elderly Arab monarch’s White House visit Friday comes just days after Obama secured the Senate votes he needs for the Iran nuclear deal to survive Congress.​

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Senate support for the diplomatic solution is still growing – in addition to the three new endorsements yesterday, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) announced his backing for the policy this morning. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) announced his opposition around the same time, but as a practical matter, his siding with the far-right on the issue won’t change the outcome.​

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Under the circumstances, it’s tough to blame the president for having “a swagger in his step,” not just because he’s overcome the Saudis’ skepticism about the international agreement, but also because Obama has had quite a bit of success lately.​

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Barring any unexpected developments, the successful implementation of the new U.S. policy in Iran is among the most consequential diplomatic success stories in a generation.​

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But Roll Call’s Steven Dennis noted this week that it’s not the only issue that’s gone President Obama’s way lately. Looking back over just the last three months, we see related victories and breakthroughs on Cuba, marriage equality, the Affordable Care Act, fast-track trade-promotion authority, and overtime pay, among other things.​

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It’s part of an increasingly successful 2015 for the Obama White House, which also includes a climate deal with China, new environmental safeguards, and net neutrality. If we include late last year – the period after the midterm elections – we can add a breakthrough immigration policy and the freeing of some American prisoners in North Korea. ​

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Not too shabby for a “lame duck” president.​

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Indeed, as we talked about a couple of months ago, it’s worth looking back at the political climate in November 2014 – just 10 months ago – in the wake of a very successful election cycle for Republicans.​

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Because it was at this point that much of the political world simply assumed that the Obama presidency was effectively over. Sure, he’d still be in office, and maybe he’d make a decision or two, but the president’s ability to advance his agenda and rack up major accomplishments had passed. Obama was irrelevant, the argument went. Republicans were ascendant and it was time to start thinking about the 2016 race.​

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Indeed, many expected this precisely because the script for “lame duck” presidents is so familiar, especially following a stinging electoral rebuke.​

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And yet, here we are. The 2014 midterms are a distant memory; Republicans lack direction and leadership; and the Obama administration has spent the year scoring one victory after another.​

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Remember, the parties had two very different explanations for what transpired in the last election cycle. For Republicans, GOP candidates won because Americans rejected progressivism. For the White House, voters were irritated with a Beltway that accomplishes nothing. Voters weren’t rejecting liberalism so much as they were expressing contempt for political paralysis.​

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The president saw no reason to temper his ambitions because as far as Obama’s concerned, he’s delivering on what people want: progress and constructive, effective policymaking.​

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About a month after the midterms, as we discussed at the time, Republicans seemed dumbfounded by the president’s governing strategy. “Didn’t he see the election results?” GOP lawmakers kept asking. “Doesn’t he realize he lost?”​

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The president did realize it, he just didn’t see the point in giving up.​

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And with the benefit of hindsight, the president’s strategy appears to be vindicated.​

 

Denali is an anagram of Denial.

 

Since the midterms, President Obama has been laser-focused on one or two things at a time, gets them done despite the odds, and then moves on to the next one.

* US-China climate change agreement
* Immigration Reform Executive Action
* New FCC rules to protect net neutrality
* New EPA regulations on greenhouse gases
* US-Cuba relations fully-restored
* Fast-track authority on the trade deals
* Executive order on overtime pay
* Executive order on paid leave for federal contractors
* US-UK-France-China-Russia-Germany-Iran nuclear deal, and getting it through Congress too
(and the related Supreme Court victories on Healthcare and Same-Sex Marriage)

And I know I'm missing even more that's happened just since the midterms.

What do you think is the next big focus?

(I'm thinking it will be finding a way to finally close the prison at Guantanamo, and then maybe a deal to get Assad out of power, after government funding is secured)

 

I wanted research to be done on alternate fuel sources for cars, but maybe the next president can focus on that to some extent?

 

Is there more work to be done on the economy, especially wages? Of course.

But for those conservatives who insist that Obama has made us economically worse off than we were 8 years ago, when he took office...







EDIT:

Netanyahu's new top media advisor said Obama is an anti-Semite
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...2808dc-83e3-11e5-8bd2-680fff868306_story.html

 

Obama is reportedly going to reject Keystone.

 

Carson admits he lied about being accepted to West Point, which he's been talking about since his 1990 biography

http://fortune.com/2015/11/06/ben-carson-west-point/?xid=yahoo_fortune

Trump is currently having a party with this news.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trade-deal-confirms-advocates-worst-fears_563b9061e4b0411d306ff765]TPP[/url] confirms critics worst fears

Yes, it sounds as awful as everyone thought. Jeezy Creezy, I never thought I'd have to support Republicans in their efforts to kill this thing.

 

Or Hillary.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-oval-office-san-bernardino_56637c46e4b072e9d1c6779f]Obama[/url] to give Oval Office address tomorrow night at 8:00 pm, only his third since taking office.

(The other two times were the BP Oil Spill, and the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq, both in the summer of 2010.)

 

why did you stand at a podium in front of your desk? just sit at your desk, dummy! lol

 

I thought that was strange too. It looked like the room was crowded. Maybe the desk doesn't have teleprompter hookups?

 

Republicans have never been too good with people going outside the box on just about anything.

 

he should have put the podium on top of his desk, then stood on top of the podium. the camera should then have been tilted up at him so that he would look suitably imperious.

 

http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/president-barack-obama-just-tell-him-you-re-the-president