Tag Archives: President Obama

Christmas Retaliation   (2016Dec17)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, December 17, 2016                                           2:32 PM

There are only five weeks left—after that the Oval Office will be de facto unoccupied. Sure, there’ll be someone sitting there—and they’ll be causing any number of new problems. Still, there will be no one presiding over the nation, looking out for the public good or concerning himself with our national security.

We’ll miss that—it was frustrating enough having a real president, and have him be stymied wherever and whenever possible by the cowards in Congress—replacing Obama with someone who doesn’t even try… Well, at least we won’t get the agita we would have seen if Hillary had had to take up the fight where Obama left off—all those cowards are still comfortably ensconced.

Congress—ha—just a bunch of pols-who-would-be-trump—I guess that’s what they see in him—he does all the bad things they do, but he has no shame about publicly demonstrating his lack of character. Cowardly Trumps—that’s what Congress is made of—a whole institution full of men who are just as selfish and craven as our president-elect, but with just enough self-awareness to know shame.

But they did alright, really—this whole worm-tongued, alt-reality world of living lies was their idea—they paved the way for the King Clown—and if he steamrollered over a few of them along the way, they still deserve credit, along with the media, for forging this brave new world of Doubt, where nothing is true if you don’t want it to be.

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So, I know what I want for Christmas—President Obama, please follow through on your response to Putin’s hacking (and denial of hacking, as if he were Trump, too). I want you to make that bastard feel it. I want your cyber-warriors to wipe that Russky smirk off his ugly face. President Obama, you’ve been a model of probity and restraint for eight years—you’re the most well-behaved and civil president this country has ever seen—and that’s great.

But there’s only five weeks left until Doofus takes your chair—so, no more mister civilization, Barry—give this guy what for. He’s got it coming, like nobody’s business. That SOB has already gotten away with it—don’t pass up the opportunity to, at least, make him regret he ever fucked with the USA. And so what if you leave a little mess for your replacement to deal with? What’s good for the goose….

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The Shifting Sands of Time   (2016Oct19)

Posted by XperDunn on

Wednesday, October 19, 2016                                         1:23 PM

Do you remember the ACA website roll-out? Gosh, what a mess—it took them weeks to make it work properly, right? And the furor, while it was still kludgey, was amazing, deafening—as if a buggy program could never be fixed. But now it works fine (better than the legislation, if we’re being honest about it) and nobody says ‘boo’ about it.

Opponents of Obamacare saw the bobbled roll-out as an opportunity to press their case—against the bill and the president, both. But the moment passed and now we are back to judging ACA on its merits, rather than the mechanics. Issues are always more vulnerable to criticism while they are still in flux—but success always changes the playing field.

The same could be said for the economy, wages, and the fight against ISIL. The meat of Donald Trump’s campaign is that ‘America is losing’. He talks of inner-city hell-scapes (even though crime rates are plummeting). He talks of job loss and high unemployment (even though employment has risen steadily for eight years). Stats on wage-increases show the biggest jump since the sixties. And with the siege of Mosul under weigh, and ahead of schedule, the idea that ISIL represents an existential threat to the USA becomes more and more of a fading boogeyman.

I’ll be interested to see in tonight’s debate whether Trump will get a pass, running on stats that were borderline when he declared two years ago—and are laughably out-of-date in October of 2016. While he’s been vaguely promising to somehow ‘make America great again’, Obama’s administration has been repairing the damage left by Bush, and exceeding the level of success our nation enjoyed before Dubya got his hands on the reins. Yes, Bush-43 did take a lot of the wind out of the sails of our ‘greatness’, but our incredible President Obama has undone all that, and moved beyond, to historically surpass our previous greatness.

People make a lot of noise about wanting the candidates to focus on issues—but they are. There is only one issue—Trump is unfit to be president. Hillary Clinton is as fit as a human being could possibly be. There’s your issue. You can dress it up, if you want—but we do not need a savior to repair all the ‘disasters’ of the Obama years—because they are small potatoes compared to all his enormous successes.

In fact, a case could be made that the whole idea of a ‘disruption’ candidate is an expression of pure frustration—and that slow, thoughtful change is the only reasonable way forward for the world’s greatest government. That is why the Educated demographic is fully backing Clinton, and the Uneducated are fully backing Trump—the uneducated, less mobile, more financially-insecure people are far more open to an emotional message, promising them the moon without any details about the journey.

So, in the end, not only is Trump wildly unfit for public office, but his mission to ‘bigly enGreaten’ America is an entirely unnecessary one. Competent public servants are already taking care of that, Drumpf—you can scurry back to your TV shows. Hillary will handle it.

One Fine Day   (2016Sep24)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Saturday, September 24, 2016                                          12:43 PM

It’s a fine day. I just finished hearing Obama’s dedication address at the opening of the Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture on C-SPAN. Stirring, inspiring, as always—isn’t that strange? Our president’s default setting is ‘stirring, inspiring’—I don’t think he can give a speech without sending a thrill through his listeners. Very strange. The combination of ‘president’ and ‘cool’ is almost overwhelming.

And Stevie Wonder sang and Patti LaBell sang—it was an eye-tearing, joyous celebration. When President Obama finished speaking, he introduced a family of four generations—a 99-year-old woman, daughter of a slave, her son, his son, and that man’s little daughter—and they rang a bell from the first African-American church, in Virginia, which was echoed by bells all across the country—a further echo of the bells rung all across the nation to celebrate Emancipation, a century and a half ago.

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I love it when I can spend a day being proud and loving this country, for what it has done, for what it is, and for what it will become. And the sun is shining. And a gentle breeze is blowing. Life is too good.

The New York Times came out with an endorsement of Hillary Clinton today. I was pleased to read it—it said much of what I’ve tried to say in my blog posts (but better, because, let’s face it, it’s the Times). And I started to think about how the conservatives rail against the media as a bunch of lying propagandists. It’s not true. I’ve never been lied to by the New York Times—they may not always be perfect, but they do not have an agenda, per se, beyond journalism itself. Neither do many of our media staples.

The social media, guerilla journalism, and cable news—those people are new to journalism as an idea—they have it confused with show business, with capitalism, or with political gamesmanship. You can indulge in that stuff, if you don’t mind having to fact-check everything they tell you. But the Gray Lady, the Washington Post, and other traditional sources are no more biased than they were in the days before Tweeting. Anyone dismissing their reporting as ‘spin’ is trying to hide from the truth, not reveal it.

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In the same way, the authorities in Charlotte, NC have claimed that the video from body-cams and dash-cams is inconclusive, yet still feel the need to hide the video from the public, even after the family of the murdered man requested its release. This is not transparency—when you hide something, it says you have something to hide—it’s as simple as that. The Charlotte community marches night after night, demanding this evidence be made public—yet still the authoritarians hide the evidence. Release the videos.

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It’s a fine day for me—but not for everyone. There is still work to be done.

Putin the Puny   (2016Sep11)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sunday, September 11, 2016                                                      3:16 PM

There is no strong leadership in Russia—Putin scrambles for respect and legitimacy in ways that only push those goals further from him. Invading other countries for conquest is not something people do any more—that’s what the UN is for. And rather than mindlessly respond in kind, the US and the UN are trying to have a dialogue with this thuggish government—because bombing the hell out of Russia has been on the table since JFK, but no president has wanted to be the one to start WWWIII. Besides which, bombing innocent Russians doesn’t get rid of the real problem—any more than the 9/11 attacks weakened America.

Unarmed Russian jets buzz our fleet, the Iranians’ motorboats hassle our missile cruisers—these are the acts of irresponsible children, not of strong leaders. The North Koreans starve while their dictator tests nuclear bombs and shoots off missiles (just like a real country—in the 50’s). Kim Jong Un seems blithely unaware of our potential to melt his entire country down to glass with a single button-push—but, again, the North Korean people don’t deserve to be attacked, only their child emperor does. Strong leadership? Please.

In an age of nuclear-fusion H-bombs and space stations, the question of military might is beside the point. Real strength, here in the present, where real people live, is a matter of control. When the US convinces a UN-based coalition to sanction these juvenile delinquents of the geopolitik, that’s power. And it couldn’t be done by an American President who acts without thought.

The flashy, trashy behavior that our enemies indulge in has no effect outside of a weekly news cycle—the steady, considered behavior of our country, and others, is what keeps the markets, trade, and commerce going around the globe. They offer their citizens nationalist rancor—we offer ours economic security (like food on the table). Granted, many of us still feel the sting of the economic crash—but that still beats the hell out of places where the common people take second place to the egos of their strong-man demagogues.

‘Strong Leadership’ can take many meanings—it can be the superficial judgment, as Trump and Pence use the phrase, or it can refer to the steadiness of nerve that Obama exhibits. I leave the choice to you, dear readers.

Time Is A River   (2016Jul29)

Posted by XperDunn on

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Friday, July 29, 2016                                                3:15 PM

Hillary Clinton’s opponents try to characterize President Obama’s administration as a failure—pointing to exported jobs, employment woes, wage woes, and economic inequality, pointing to threats from terrorism at home and abroad. And they hammer away at every questionable action taken by either Obama or Clinton (we’re all sick of hearing about them because there are only a few, out of all the good both have accomplished).

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Cherry-picking data is a favorite sport of the GOP. When they talk about Obama’s poor economic stats (which aren’t all that poor) they never mention Obama’s starting point—or rather, the end of eight years under Bush-43. We were in economic hell—there’s no other way to spin it. And the fact that most economic stats are at record highs, eight years later, with unemployment down to nearly reasonable levels (there is still work to do) makes it ludicrous that the GOP could pretend to any understanding of economics—or any ability to fix the problems. They created the problems—but you won’t hear them own up to that. They’ll even complain that Obama’s recovery was ‘too slow’—hey, maybe if you didn’t create the problem, you’d have the right to back-seat-drive the recovery.

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The same is true of terrorism. Bush went to war with another country—by mistake—and then screwed the landing. He turned Iraq from a developed country into a chaotic free-for-all—and then doubled-down on military forces instead of addressing the hard work of re-building the country’s infrastructure and brokering between all the different factions a truce that had a shot at lasting long enough to get Iraq back to what it was. Now it is a wasteland, a breeding ground for ISIL—can they blame that on Obama or Hillary? No, but they can criticize the administration’s attempts to deal with the problem. It is childishly self-serving to spill milk and carp at the person wiping it up.

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Our history did not begin at Obama’s inauguration. The GOP earned their total shunning in 2008—they had us all in a very bad place—and how they ever wormed their way back in two years later says more about our educational system than it does about their merit as civil servants. And since their majorities in the House and Senate, they have sabotaged the gears of government—just to try and embarrass Obama. Now they want to point to him and say, “He didn’t get anything done.” Well, that’s right—he only got done as much as he could those first two years (AHA and banking regulations and saving the auto industry) and then went on to do as much as a president can do alone, while the Congress jerks off. I’d say half of them are just cynical pols—and the other half are simply cracker bigots. How else do you explain more than half of our 500 legislators deciding that their job is to block anything the president tries to do?

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Notice there is no qualifier to that goal—even if they really want something the president wants to pass, they’ll still block it. The proof is in their denial of Supreme Court nominee Garland a Senate hearing, for a year and counting—before he was nominated, the GOP wrote nothing but love letters about him—now they don’t want to know him. Politics can be nauseating.

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So, if Obama’s administration has failed in important ways—he hasn’t done it in a vacuum—or rather, he has, though he shouldn’t have had to. The GOP created more than one crisis in this country, then they spent eight years blocking efforts to right the situation, then they spent the last two years working on one thing—trying to destroy Hillary Clinton’s image. From the polls, I have to admit they’ve done a great job—but again, that says more about our educational system than it does about their merit as civil servants.

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I don’t know—maybe there’s something in uneducated people that wants to be taken advantage of. Other polls seem to show that no one with a college education will vote for the clown who hijacked the GOP. People who need dramas in their lives will hang on to all the propaganda, resurrecting the zombie lies for the nth time, making out as if there’s a real contest here. I’m sorry—this election was over when Trump said Mexicans were rapists. Even if Hillary Clinton wasn’t a great woman, and wouldn’t make a fantastic President—we’d still have to vote for her, just to keep him away from the big button—yikes.

 

Yes Mindy, There Is A Hillary   (2016Jul24)

Posted by XperDunn on

Sunday, July 24, 2016                                              3:42 PM

I agree with you, Min—choosing Pence for a VP pick was lucky for Pence, since his anti-gay and anti-abortion legislative efforts have angered his Indiana constituency—not to mention his resistance to a free-needle program to stop the spread of AIDs in his state—and it was unlikely that he could win re-election as Governor. On the other side, Hillary has chosen Tim Kaine, whom The New Yorker’s Adam Borowitz jokingly said, “exhibits none of the outward characteristics of a sociopath or clinical narcissist”—meaning he’s never had a scandal or an investigation or a fraud charge, so how can we take him seriously as a politician?

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He is a lot like Joe Biden—when you go to smear him, you realize there’s no mud on the ground. A seemingly decent person who works hard as an honest politician—it’s confusing, I know.

I also agree with you about the legislature—both the house and senate GOP swore they would block anything and everything Obama tried to do—just so they could call him a ‘do-nothing’ president. But the Democrats did manage to regulate the banks and pass healthcare reform before the GOP slipped back into Congress—so when the AP did a fact-check on all the doom and gloom of Trump’s acceptance speech last week, they found that he lied about most of it—the economy is better, employment is better, crime is down, Iran can’t manufacture nuclear weapons, we have our first global climate-change accords, relations with our neighbor Cuba are being normalized (with Congress blocking the dropping of the fifty-year-old embargo, of course) and Obama has appointed a fantastic Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, who has just set a record for the longest an appointee has ever had to wait for a Senate hearing (almost a year now—and counting).

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And let’s not forget that the origin of our financial woes came from the GOP’s spendthrift war-mongering and lax banking oversight—they left Obama with quite a hole to dig the country out of—but he did it, and has us back to better than before the bank crashes. So ‘just more of Obama’s policies’ sounds pretty good to most people—just think what a Democratic president could do with a working legislature.

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To get that, we need more than just Hillary Clinton for president—we need some more Democrats in both houses of Congress. Both Clinton’s and Kaine’s Senate records show that they worked well across the aisle—so even if we don’t take the House or Senate, they still have a shot at some real governing, unless the GOP’s thinly-veiled racism simply transforms into thinly-veiled misogyny. Their acceptance of the orange Mussolini makes me feel that nothing is beyond them any more. They supposedly did some re-thinking after Obama won his second term—maybe when Trump gets his ass kicked, they’ll do some thinking worthy of the name.

Journalist Cowards   (2016May06)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, May 06, 2016                                               8:17 PM

I keep finding new aspects of Trump’s popularity and media-attention that upset me. Today it occurred to me that everyone talks about what Trump said or what Trump did—but no one ever talks about who Trump is or what Trump thinks.

For instance, no one ever asks Trump why he suddenly decided to devote his life to public service—and the reason they don’t ask is because they know without it being said—Trump isn’t devoting himself to public service (although that is the job he’s running for) he’s going after a shiny power-bauble that caught his attention. His ego is actually doing the running for office—he probably has a tiny id somewhere deep inside that’s sweating how big of a hassle being the president is going to be.

The real president today scolded the press saying, “This is not entertainment. This is not a reality-show. This is a contest for the presidency of the United States of America.” I’m even a little upset with his word choice at the end—it may be a ‘contest’, but it is first and foremost a choice—a responsibility that voters have on their shoulders, whether they recognize its seriousness or not.

Trump has never done any work in the field in which he has chosen to ‘start at the top’—far from ever running before, or holding office before, he has never so much as clerked in a public office, courthouse, or civic center. And he never served. Past debates over presidential candidates focused on who would do the job better—with a complete novice like Trump, the answer is clear—regardless of policy, Hillary Clinton would walk into the job knowing the context of her position—for Trump it would be like sitting down to a snazzy new video-game console—he’d have fun figuring out what all the different buttons do—and he’d get the biggest kick out of the stuff that blows stuff up. No matter how popular—why would we want an uninitiated child in the top slot?

Is it because the voters just don’t have the balls, or the emotional investment to take to the streets and rise up against corruption and obstructionism—and they’re going to vote for Trump as a way of destroying the government? It’s kinda like Tea-Party-gone-nuclear, if you think about it—arm-chair rebellion. This simple-minded showman will never get elected—unless the whole country has gone out of its mind. I just don’t know if I can take the media fawning over this jackass, after a year and more of it already, all the way to November.

Isn’t there one decent journalist left in America? Won’t someone please ask this idiot to explain why voters should trust him when he never gives any specific details about what he’ll do, if elected? Won’t someone please ask him why he thinks an ego qualifies him to rule the free world, absent any knowledge or background in either domestic or foreign affairs beyond shady business meetings with god knows who? Paycheck –journalists—that’s what I call you. It’s not about the job—it’s about the paycheck. Now that I think of it—no wonder you guys are behind him—you’re already living in his world. Gutless traitors.

Obama’s Paean   (2016Jan12)

Posted by XperDunn on

Tuesday, January 12, 2016                                                10:35 PM

Eight years and many a fine speech—but perhaps more impressively, never a stupid remark—take that, Republicans. We used to handicap poor Dubya whenever he made a speech. Bill had a good run—until the end when he started debating the definition of ‘is’—and lying some, which is its own kind of stupid. Before Bill we had Reagan and Bush—theirs was a kind of dazed-bully kind of stupid. But President Obama is an intellectual—he’s used to having to talk down to people without ‘talking down’ to them—but he’s always been more the knowledgeable guy you look up to than the guy you want to drink beer with. I’ll never understand the ‘drink beer with’ BS.

You may want to feel good towards your candidate for president—but you have to feel that they are more knowledgeable than Joe Schmoe from the local bar. I mean—even Dubya was a college grad—he wasn’t stupid stupid, just stupid for a president. It’s a hard job—you can’t have no idiot at the switch in there.

Which brings me to my favorite part of Obama’s final State of the Union Address—when he called out Trump and Cruz for their anti-American rhetoric of hate and division, saying we should reject all politics that target people by race or religion. That was good. I also enjoyed when he pointed out that America is too strong to be threatened in any real way by ISIL or Al-Qaeda—that citizens may be under threat from random craziness, but the country as a whole should deal with that without jumping the shark about national security. It’s refreshing to hear a politician tell us not to be afraid, isn’t it?

I’ll tell you why the healots have gotten out of hand—progressives have progressed—they learned that progressive programs are more subtle than a catch-phrase. The world’s complexity demands thought and patience—and we have to be sturdy in our grasp of change. Change without thought breeds chaos—catch-phrases work on the emotions, not on governance. The divide between good politics and good governance widens every day—it has always created a paradox, but now the ubiquity of media makes a monster of campaigning, completely overshadowing the whole idea of good government. So, while thoughtful politicians must be ever more careful of statements they know will be picked apart by nitpickers, the hucksters can shout their vitriol to the rafters without fear of an answering shout from their more serious rivals—people handicapped by their insistence on thinking before speaking.

I understand that people like Trump have to be covered by the media while they are running for president—but I hope we can enjoy a moratorium on idiots after the election is over (assuming we don’t elect one). I’ve heard enough from Trump to last me—and if I never hear him again it’ll be too soon. On the other hand, President Obama’s cool will be sorely missed—it’s hard being an egghead—and there’s something reassuring about having one in office. I felt like, even if the rest of the country is going crazy, at least the president gets it—I’ll miss that—I truly believe it’s better to have some brains in the executive office.

Anyway, here’s today’s improv:

 

 

Ho Ho Ho   (2015Sep25)

Posted by XperDunn on

Friday, September 25, 2015                                              11:06 AM

Christmas come three months early—that’s a way of looking at it. This whole weekend, barring the unforeseen, is shaping up to have all the spirit of the holiday season—and without the concomitant burden of family gatherings and gift-giving. Applauded at our seat of government, at the site of the 9/11 memorial, and at the UN General Assembly—cheered by luminous throngs along every byway—striking in the dignity he brings to humility and compassion—the pope has hit this country like a love bomb.

Speaker Boehner resigns his post for the good of the Congress, of his party, and of the nation—and hopes to avert a government shutdown by passing a clean bill with bi-partisan support before he steps down. Even if the forces bringing him to this decision hadn’t been inexorably in play before the pope’s visit, the speaker still had two choices—fight it out or fall on his sword for the common good—and the decision to announce the latter choice the day after meeting with Francis tempts us to imagine a connection between these two events.

Presidents Obama and Xiaoping announced agreement on a new carbon-emissions reduction proposal—and as the two largest producer-nations of carbon dioxide, et. al., their almost too-good-to-be-true willingness to cooperate in trying to lessen human-source impact on climate gives us hope that the oil-barons of the world (and co.) will not succeed in destroying us all. Xi Xiaoping’s appearance provided a marked contrast to the pope—all self-control and internalization of feeling—a man weighed down perhaps by the impossibility of being overly humanist while holding the reins of three billion kinda-hungry people—and a government that is more than a match for America when it comes to corruption.

It’s enough to make a person giddy—I can’t even watch the normal news stories about Volkswagen, or Trump, or other bummers—they ruin the mood. My only concern is the pope’s health—his itinerary makes me tired just to hear. But I’m not too worried—when I was boy, our grandmother took my little brother and I to Washington D.C. for a week (this was before Disney World). We spent days trudging from the Capitol to the Washington Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial to the White House to the Smithsonian to the Library of Congress to Mt Vernon to the Iwo Jima statue—our young legs were exhausted, but my old gramma trooped along like Patton, unstoppable and untiring.

And just think—I don’t have to have my relatives to dinner, I don’t have to buy you a present and you don’t need to get me anything—why, it’s better than Christmas. But there’s still plenty of singing (I loved the NY Children’s Choir’s performance of “Let there Be Peace on Earth” at the UN earlier) and, more importantly, my favorite part of December 25th is the spirit in the air—and there’s so much of that right now I can hardly stand it. Merry Christmas everybody!