Posts tagged Barack Obama

Scorched Earth Policy

3
1 day ago
by dcpetterson in
Acceptable damage?

Accept­able damage?

The most destruc­tive wild­fire in state his­tory is rag­ing in Col­orado. It has already destroyed 473 homes and dam­aged an addi­tional 17. The second-​​most destruc­tive fire was a year ago, the Waldo Canyon Fire, which raged from June 23, 2012 until it was declared con­tained on July 10. That blaze destroyed 346 homes.

This year’s mas­sive fire is one of about 19,000 wild­fires that have destroyed over 700 square miles this sea­son. Five fire­fight­ers have died so far this year, and the num­ber of fires in Col­orado has increased forty five per­cent over last year.

It is pos­si­ble that the sever­ity of recent wild­fire sea­sons has been wors­ened by global cli­mate change. Even though that’s a favorite topic of mine, that won’t be the focus of today’s arti­cle. The dam­age caused by these fires is also being increased by the effects of the Repub­li­can sequester cuts.

Fifty mil­lion dol­lars has been cut from the bud­get of fed­eral fire­fight­ers because of the sequester. This has forced the For­est Ser­vice to cut 500 fire­fight­ers and 50 engines. They are fac­ing more fires, and larger ones, with fewer peo­ple and fewer resources. (more…)

Open Mic June 14

27
3 days ago
by Logarchism.com in
Ducking Out Of His Own Bill?

Duck­ing Out Of His Own Bill ?

The week started with rev­e­la­tions about the NSA and a leaker who remains at large, and led to later rev­e­la­tions about State Depart­ment employ­ees hav­ing sex. In what may be a related sex­ual devel­op­ment, an all-​​male vote in the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee rec­om­mended pas­sage of a bill to out­law all abor­tions nation­ally past 20 weeks — even in cases of rape and incest.

Tak­ing a long way around to sex, the Sen­ate voted to allow debate on the immi­gra­tion reform bill. It then defeated an amend­ment regard­ing bor­der secu­rity, despite the threat of one of the bill’s authors, Sen­a­tor Marco Rubio (R-​​FL), to scut­tle the bill if it didn’t have this amend­ment. That same Marco Rubio is now threat­en­ing to scut­tle the bill if it rec­og­nizes same-​​sex cou­ples. Con­tin­u­ing this theme of obses­sion over sex, Repub­li­cans in Wis­con­sin are ram­ming through a forced ultra­sound bill, requir­ing women to receive an inva­sive and med­ically unnec­es­sary pro­ce­dure if they want an abortion.

Leav­ing aside for a moment sub­jects of sex, abor­tion, and rape, Pres­i­dent Obama has announced con­clu­sive evi­dence that the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment used chem­i­cal weapons against its own peo­ple, and Amer­ica will there­fore increase mil­i­tary sup­port for Syr­ian rebels. None of this will alter plans for New Jer­sey to hold a spe­cial elec­tion in Octo­ber to replace the late Sen­a­tor Frank Lautenberg.

Those are only a few things that hap­pened dur­ing this busy week. What do you want to talk about?

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

From Alpha to Obama, with Xi in Between

7
4 days ago
by Monotreme in
Xi Jinping

Xi Jin­ping

The sum­mit between US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Chi­nese Pre­mier Xi Jin­ping con­cluded on Sat­ur­day with no major pol­icy pro­nounce­ments or appar­ent progress on the thorny issues that divide the world’s two largest economies. (China passed Japan between 2008 and 2011 to take over sec­ond place, and is due to pass the US as the world’s largest econ­omy in about 2030.)

Xi Jin­ping is the fifth gen­er­a­tion of mod­ern Chi­nese lead­er­ship. Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Mao Zedong, Hua Guofeng, Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jin­tao, he is cur­rently the Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of the Com­mu­nist Party.

The power of the Gen­eral Sec­re­tary is not assured. For exam­ple, from 1978 to 1992, Deng Xiaop­ing served as China’s “para­mount leader” even though he had no offi­cial title in the party, which was osten­si­bly led by Hua, Hu and Zhao dur­ing that time. Deng was the most promi­nent of the “sec­ond gen­er­a­tion” of Chi­nese lead­er­ship, which assumed power after Mao’s death and the end of the “first generation”.

The “third gen­er­a­tion” was led by Jiang, and the fourth was led by Hu. With the tur­moil of Mao’s death and the purge of the Gang of Four well-​​forgotten, China appears to have estab­lished an orderly 10-​​year cycle of lead­er­ship change, in accor­dance with the Constitution.

On Novem­ber 15, 2012, Xi became Gen­eral Sec­re­tary of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party of China and Chair­man of the Party’s Cen­tral Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sion. On March 14, he was named Pres­i­dent of the People’s Repub­lic of China. The sixth gen­er­a­tion is due to assume power in 2022.

Three major items were on the agenda of the “shirt­sleeve sum­mit” held between Fri­day, June 7 and Sat­ur­day, June 8 at the Annen­berg man­sion (“Sun­ny­lands”) in Ran­cho Mirage, Cal­i­for­nia, about 100 miles east-​​southeast of Los Ange­les, near Palm Springs. (more…)

Open Mic June 7

85
1 week ago
by Logarchism.com in

Win­ning in court

The courts have been in the news this week. The Supreme Court ruled that DNA can be col­lected in the same way as fin­ger­prints. Pres­i­dent Obama nom­i­nated three peo­ple to the DC Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, dar­ing Sen­ate Repub­li­cans to block them. On the ten­nis court, today the French Open semi­fi­nals are being played. And today is Fri­day, which means we court your opin­ions on any and all topics.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Courting Obstruction and Delay

87
1 week ago
by Monotreme in
Obstructing nominations since 1981.

Obstruct­ing nom­i­na­tions since 1981.

It would appear that the obstruc­tion of judi­cial nom­i­nees by the Sen­ate has reached a break­ing point. On Tues­day, a vis­i­bly angry Pres­i­dent Obama advanced three nom­i­nees for the influ­en­tial Dis­trict of Colum­bia Fed­eral Cir­cuit Court, which is not only regarded as a stepping-​​stone to the Supreme Court but also reviews a huge num­ber of deci­sions made by Fed­eral agencies.

The President’s nom­i­nees are attor­neys Patri­cia A. Mil­lett and Cor­nelia T.L. Pil­lard as well as Fed­eral judge Robert L. Wilkins.

Obama threw down the gaunt­let in pointed remarks:

This is not about prin­ci­pled oppo­si­tion; this is about polit­i­cal obstruc­tion. I rec­og­nize that nei­ther party has a per­fect track record here. Democ­rats weren’t com­pletely blame­less when I was in the Sen­ate. But what’s hap­pen­ing now is unprece­dented. For the good of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, it has to stop.

Is it really unprece­dented? Let’s go to the tape. (more…)

You Can’t Imprison Dead People

2
2 weeks ago
by Michael Weiss in

Pres­i­dent Obama, giv­ing his dron­ing speech

Pres­i­dent Obama wants to shut the prison at Guan­tanamo Bay. He’s made that clear since his cam­paign in 2007, and has not wavered from that stance. I sup­port that, and applaud him for it. But he’s been imple­ment­ing a pol­icy that may well be worse, and that’s bad for all of us.

I alluded to this in some of my responses to dcpetterson’s arti­cle ear­lier this week. But it’s worth delv­ing deeper to under­stand the source of my con­cern, and look at it in per­spec­tive. So I’m devot­ing my arti­cle today to that subject.

Let’s look at what the Pres­i­dent has pub­lished on the topic. On May 23, he released a “fact sheet”, out­lin­ing the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for deal­ing with ter­ror­ists that are nei­ther in the United States, nor in “Areas of Active Hos­til­i­ties” (e.g., Afghanistan).  (more…)

Go to Top