President Obama at the Tomb of the Unknowns, Nov. 11, 2016.
President Barack Obama is leaving office on a high note. Many people might not remember what it was like when Obama took office in January 2009. The Bush Recession was underway, and America was losing 779,000 jobs per month. Stores were closing. Restaurants were empty. And our treasury was also empty (in fact, trillions in debt) from Bush’s disastrous Iraq War. Obama, with no help from the Republicans, turned things around to the point where he will be turning over a country that, by most objective measures, is doing very well. Let’s take a look at some of those numbers, so that we will have a comparison for the future:
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Leave a comment! Tags: clean energy, climate change, Donald Trump, economy, environment, Gas, GDP, George W. Bush, growth, healthcare, Iraq War, jobs, President Barack Obama, unemployment
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at their first presidential debate
The 2016 presidential campaign has been relentlessly negative. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and their campaign teams, surrogates and supporters, have been bashing each other with zeal. That may be electoral politics as usual, but it doesn’t bode well for governing the country, or having Americans united on important issues around the world, once the election is over. Accordingly, here is an admittedly fantasy scenario of how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could come together at their next debate over one simple question, without sacrificing their principles:
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President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama after clinching 2008 Democratic presidential nomination
Last night, one week before the Iowa Caucus, CNN hosted a Town Hall event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, featuring Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. The three candidates showed differences in their views and policies while answering questions from the audience of mostly undecided Democratic voters and from moderator Chris Cuomo. But perhaps more striking was the level of knowledge, substance and forcefulness each candidate exhibited on the issues.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, Affordable Care Act, Bernie Sanders, climate change, CNN, Democratic Party, Democratic primaries, Donald Trump, economy, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, ISIS, jobs, Martin O'Malley, President Barack Obama
President Obama speaks at the Pentagon last December
President Barack Obama‘s final State of the Union address last night was marked by an optimistic, confident tone in promoting America’s values and its leadership position for the future. In doing so, Obama was reminiscent of two presidents who loom large in our recent history: Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Barack Obama, cancer, climate change, Confederate flag, Congress, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, economy, healthcare, ISIS, JFK, jobs, John F. Kennedy, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, State of the Union
The politics of plastic straws
Last week in Nevada, we asked the waitress not to give us straws in our soft drinks. The drinks didn’t need to be stirred, and we didn’t need to waste more plastic that ends up in a landfill or a floating trash archipelago in the ocean. “Oh, you’re one of them,” said the waitress. We could only conclude that “one of them” meant a hippie liberal environmentalist who should be mocked for wanting to conserve our resources. We concluded that our waitress is a conservative who might be brainwashed by Republican talking points from Fox News and other sources that sheath their pro-corporate messages behind a veil of “individual freedom” and an “us versus them” mentality.
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Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire
Hillary Rodham Clinton announced last Sunday that she is running for the Democratic nomination for President in 2016. While Clinton is one of the best-known people in the world, more folks might be familiar with knee-jerk labels used to describe her. In fact, Hillary has a long record of commitment to progressive American values. Here are seven reasons to love Hillary Clinton for President:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Democratic Party, gay marriage, George W. Bush, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Supreme Court
Protesters opposing Arizona anti-immigrant law
Republicans and conservatives, which are curently one and the same, love to come up with short, catchy labels for things. Here’s a list of popular Republican political phrases. Those labels and phrases are always loaded, either in favor of the Republicans, against the Democrats, or both. So, if you’re a Democrat, a liberal or a progressive, why would you ever use those Republican labels, making them even more popular so they get taken up by the mainstream media and become part of our vernacular? The answer is, you shouldn’t. But plenty of Democrats, liberals and progressives are making this mistake lately. Here are a few examples of Republican-loaded phrases that Democrats, and thus the mainstream media, are using all over the place. Hopefully, these will serve as a reminder to cut it out:
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Leave a comment! Tags: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, DARK Act, Democratic Party, Discrimination, Food safety, healthcare, immigration, Obamacare, Republican Party, Right to Work, Supreme Court
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama bring toys to support U.S. Marine Corps Toys For Tots
Take note of December 2014 as the high-water mark for President Barack Obama, the Democrats in Congress, and the United States itself. Starting in January 2015, when Republicans take over the U.S. Senate, life in America could get much worse.
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Wake Up and Vote for Democrats poster
Mainstream Democratic and progressive voters don’t agree on everything, but they all seemed to agree on one thing after last Tuesday’s elections: the Democratic Party let them down. Democratic officeholders and candidates running for election ran away from President Obama and his agenda. One example was Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Grimes not only refused to assert that she had voted for President Obama, she was reluctant to tout the stunning success of the Affordable Care Act in Kentucky (known as Kynect), and instead began most answers by naming problems with the ACA that need fixing.
Running away from the President’s record in 2014 made no sense for Democrats, as President Obama’s agenda literally was the Democrats’ agenda. Every law that President Obama signed, from the Stimulus to the Affordable Care Act, was something that a majority in Congress, and certainly a majority of Democrats in Congress, first had to pass. Perhaps some Democrats need to go back and read their Constitution, or watch Schoolhouse Rock.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2014 Election, Affordable Care Act, climate change, Democratic Party, economy, energy, environment, global warming, healthcare, LGBT, Republican Party, War On Women
Vote Nihilism
Ve believe in nossing, Lebowski. Nossing. And tomorrow ve come back and ve cut off your chonson.
–The Big Lebowski, 1998
What to make of last night’s mid-term election? Democrats never articulated a positive unifying theme. Most of the Democrats’ endless fundraising appeals tried to scare supporters about the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove pouring millions of dollars into Republican campaigns. Republicans ran a national campaign on a unifying theme, but that theme — “President Obama is bad” — was also wholly negative. Most voters didn’t vote for anything.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2014 Election, Affordable Care Act, Congress, Democratic Party, economy, gun control, healthcare, marijuana, Obamacare, President Obama, Republican Party, unemployment
