Posts tagged Barack Obama

Minute Ricin

25
1 month ago
by Monotreme in
The Tholen Abode, far from the ricin patties. Source: New York Times.

The Tholen Abode, far from the ricin pat­ties. Source: New York Times.

Roger Von Bergen­dorff was more than a lone wolf. He was a strange, dis­tem­pered wolf. Often sick as a dog, he was over $6,000 behind on his rent in La Mesa, Cal­i­for­nia. He finally found refuge in his mid 50s in a River­ton, Utah house owned by his cousin, Thomas Tholen.

River­ton is a sub­urb, maybe even exurb, of Salt Lake City. It has “horse prop­er­ties”, most near the tit­u­lar Jor­dan River (note the Exo­dus theme so pop­u­lar in Utah), tract homes, and plenty of ranch-​​style homes built in the 1950s when this was the outer edge of homes in the Salt Lake Val­ley. The only IKEA for 400 miles in any direc­tion is not far away. If the traf­fic isn’t bad, it’s about 15 min­utes to down­town and maybe 30 min­utes to some of the finest ski­ing in the United States.

A book on how to make ricin arrived at the Tholen res­i­dence, addressed to Roger. He fol­lowed the instruc­tions assid­u­ously and made the deadly toxin.

If Roger had what could be called “a pur­pose” in mak­ing his ricin, only the mis­fir­ing synapses in his bro­ken brain could dis­cern it. He’s cer­tainly never com­mu­ni­cated it to any­one official.

Roger moved out, but not until he had shown Cousin Thomas what he had done. (more…)

Home on Lagrange

21
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in

nasa-2014-budget-4For good or ill, much of the west­ern half of the United States was set­tled by Euro­pean colonists because of incen­tives such as the Cal­i­for­nia Gold Rush and the Okla­homa Land Rush and the Texas Oil Boom.  Eco­nomic inter­ests encour­aged an almost manic tidal wave of migra­tion and city-​​building. Often, such waves of invest­ment and pop­u­la­tion move­ment hap­pen with gov­ern­men­tal assis­tance and encour­age­ment. They always hap­pen because busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als see an oppor­tu­nity for growth and profit.

Over the next few decades, we will wit­ness another such tidal wave of migra­tion and invest­ment. The seeds are being planted now, and Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2014 bud­get includes a request for a $105 mil­lion down pay­ment on the new land rush.

The amount of real estate avail­able dwarfs any­thing we’ve seen before in our his­tory. Tril­lions of dol­lars’ worth of vital resources await devel­op­ment. We need only the courage and vision to take the nec­es­sary steps.

To get this trea­sure, we’ll be in over our heads. Way over our heads. (more…)

Hitting Into the Rough

7
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in

eisenhower-golfPres­i­dent Obama played a round of golf yes­ter­day, for the first time in a month. Golf is sort of a sta­ple of pres­i­den­tial exer­cise.  Pres­i­dents Eisen­hower, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Rea­gan, George H. W. Bush,  Clin­ton, and George W. Bush were all avid golfers. This is the sort of exer­cise the Secret Ser­vice likes for Pres­i­dents to engage in. It isn’t phys­i­cally stress­ful enough (like jog­ging or bike rid­ing) to unduly threaten the health even of older men, and it allows the Ser­vice to clear an area many tens of acres in every direc­tion to keep away would-​​be dan­gers. Plus, it is pretty cheap as pres­i­den­tial out­ings go.

Pres­i­dent Obama, how­ever, has come under crit­i­cism for golf­ing this week­end — as he seems to for every­thing he does.

Some Repub­li­cans have argued that the resources devoted to the president’s pro­tec­tion on such out­ings could be bet­ter spent on other pri­or­i­ties, espe­cially in light of the admin­is­tra­tion can­cel­ing pub­lic tours of the White House.

So here we have Repub­li­cans crit­i­ciz­ing the Pres­i­dent for wast­ing Secret Ser­vice funds on pro­tect­ing him while he’s golf­ing, instead of wast­ing Secret Ser­vice funds on pro­tect­ing the White House from tourists. (more…)

Cantoring Through Crises

68
2 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Dr Evil 700 Billion

As a little-​​heralded fea­ture of the recent fis­cal bat­tles between the White House and Con­gress, Amer­ica has largely achieved the goal of the “grand bar­gain” pur­sued dur­ing the sum­mer of 2011.

If you recall, back then Pres­i­dent Obama and Speaker Boehner at one time came close to an agree­ment that would reduce the fed­eral deficit by roughly $4 tril­lion over the next decade. A deficit reduc­tion of this size was seen as the Holy Grail of bud­get talks, a reduc­tion that was suf­fi­cient (even if barely) to sta­bi­lize the nation’s eco­nomic future. Talks fell apart then because of Repub­li­can refusal to accept rev­enue increases. But since then, slowly, halt­ingly, painfully, that magic $4 tril­lion goal has come very close to reality.

We’re almost there. Too bad so few peo­ple know it. Even worse, it’s too bad that polit­i­cal strate­gists choose to pre­tend oth­er­wise. Per­haps there’s some­thing evil in the (inten­tional?) avoid­ance of the real­i­ties. (more…)

Return Address

333
3 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Tonight, Pres­i­dent Obama returns to give the first State of the Union Address of his sec­ond term.

The President’s annual State of the Union address has evolved over time. As we’ve noted before on these pages, the Con­sti­tu­tional man­date only spec­i­fies that the Pres­i­dent must, accord­ing to Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 3:

… from time to time give to the Con­gress Infor­ma­tion on the State of the Union, and rec­om­mend to their Con­sid­er­a­tion such Mea­sures as he shall judge nec­es­sary and expedient …

That is, on occa­sion, he must tell Con­gress how things are going, and what he wants them to pass as leg­is­la­tion. There’s no require­ment of a speech, no require­ment of it being annual, and no require­ment of it being any par­tic­u­lar time of year.

But tra­di­tions form, and the live, tele­vised annual speech before Con­gress has become the stan­dard. Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton turned them into thereto­fore unseen spec­ta­cle, in a man­ner he reprised at last year’s Demo­c­ra­tic National Convention.

And, along the way, the oppo­si­tion party’s responses to the State of the Union Addresses became part of the tra­di­tion as well. Until recently, that meant a sin­gle oppo­si­tion speech. Begin­ning in 2011, though, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) gave the first Tea Party response, dis­tinct from that of the Repub­li­can Party.  (more…)

The Next Act

16
3 months ago
by dcpetterson in
English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the...

The Pres­i­dent gets serious

The next round of bud­getary pos­tur­ing and hijinks in is full flower. This act must play out by the first of March, when the sequester cuts — delayed by the last bud­get deal — are again sched­uled to kick in. Here’s where things now stand.

Pres­i­dent Obama has made a pro­posal for han­dling the upcom­ing cri­sis that Con­gress has once more inflicted upon itself. Many Repub­li­cans — though, sur­pris­ingly not all — have voiced pre­dictable objec­tions. Repub­li­cans are push­ing for all cuts, all the time, pri­mar­ily to Medicare and Social Secu­rity, both of which seem to be on increas­ingly good finan­cial footing.

We’ve got just over there weeks before the cuts kick in, cuts designed to be too hor­ri­ble to con­tem­plate, so hor­ri­ble they would force Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans to work together. They have been hor­ri­ble enough that they’ve forced Con­gress to delay them once. What will hap­pen next? (more…)

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