Politics Obama - Actually doing a good job?

ASU2003 · Aug 5, 2012

Aceventura said: ↑

Explain how Al Gore is different? He is doing what he is doing for his personal gain, same as everyone else. Some believe oil is in the best interests of people and act accordingly, Gore believes carbon off-sets and carbon foot-print shrinkage alternatives is in the best interests of people and acts accordingly. They both can be 100% right or wrong or degrees in between. Who should decide which direction we should go? Who is entitled to the billions in profits? I say let the free market decide, what do you say?
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I say the free market doesn't care if millions of people are killed or the air we breathe is heavily polluted.

Al Gore isn't the problem. Even in a world where he is wrong, it would still make more sense to spend a little money now to get a better environment, air quality, and decentralized energy sector. If I produce my own power, it is hard for big companies to charge me more to pay for their beach house, require me to work till I'm 80 to keep the lights on, or cause problems with mining the raw materials to power big power plants.

rogue49 · Aug 8, 2012

This is a scenario that has occured quite often during Obama's term,
where he's had to deal with the consequences of the actions or lack of actions of Congress.

It's like a teacher, (good or not...let's not really judge quality here...that's arbitary and a long-term perspective)
who is dealing with the grades of rotten students (or at least unattentive/uncaring)
My cousin who's a HS math teacher has to do this ALL the time...and it has impact on his workload, sanity and ability to produce.
And "authority figures" or outside observers end up judging them on HIS teaching ability. (when I know he's good and doing his damnedest)

What do you do about a difficult student that you are forced by law to cater to???
"You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink..." (or in this case at time...a bucking bronco)
It's like herding cats... (and a multitude of other metaphors)

Congress has a LOT to account for the mess, not all Obama (or even GWB...)

But Congress is an amorphous mass...the President a HARD target.
One we are generally pissed at...yet they are re-elected time & again...the Prez gets to try to cleanup the mess or move it forward.
Press on a Rep is fleeting...Bad press on the prez is bleeding...gets the viewers. One is a blur, the other is your favorite dodgeball target.

Anyways...you get my point...here's TFA.

Obama’s hand forced on sequester
By: Darren Samuelsohn and Manu Raju - August 7, 2012

President Barack Obama — with a big nudge from Congress — is about to get much more specific about a touchy topic in the heat of his reelection campaign.

Legislation Obama signed into law Tuesday will force him to detail early next month how he’d make the first phase of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts across the federal budget, from defense to education to the environment.

Sure, Obama gets to spare the likes of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and Pell Grants.

But everything else could get whacked by the $109 billion in cuts set to begin in January, absent a last-minute deal with a divided Congress. The automatic reductions are a consequence of the congressional supercommittee’s failure last year to reach a deficit-slashing deal.

The stakes couldn’t be higher: Combined with the January expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, the first year of automatic reductions could send the country back into recession, economists warn. Companies could begin scaling back their employment rolls once they learn the precise nature of the planned cuts from the Obama report.

And there’s no way to whack the budget without making somebody mad. Longtime Democratic allies are trying to protect cherished domestic programs. Republicans — and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — are warning that national security programs are in peril, and the GOP is already highlighting the potential loss of military jobs in battlegrounds such as Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire and Virginia.

“It’s going to be a hell of a Labor Day,” said Jim Dyer, a former GOP staff director to the House Appropriations Committee, estimating the date the White House Office of Management and Budget will issue its report that details programs and projects targeted for cuts on Jan. 2, 2013. “You put specifics out there, and each cut is a story unto itself. It’s an unenviable position to be in.”

That’s precisely why many Republicans are urging Mitt Romney to avoid specifics on which programs he’d slash as the campaign season heads into its final stretch.

“Why would you want to go out on a limb and say, ‘I’m for this and this and this specific thing?’” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “You ought to do like [Ronald] Reagan did, if you want to be president of the United States, have a few big things and talk about them.”

For their part, White House officials don’t sound worried about releasing details of spending cuts, noting those can be skirted — if Republicans make concessions on taxes.

“Congress must act to avoid these devastating cuts & ask wealthiest to pay fair share,” White House deputy press secretary Amy Brundage wrote Tuesday on Twitter in announcing the president’s signature on the law.

But among Democratic lawmakers, fears are mounting over the impact of the spending cuts. Congressional Democrats lined up behind the bill that requires the Obama report, which passed nearly unanimously last month in the House and by voice vote in the Senate. The Office of Management and Budget has 30 days to issue the report now that Obama has signed the bill into law.

Republicans, who had been hammering the Obama administration for months to detail the potential defense cuts, won Democratic support after they agreed to include in the bill provisions requiring the White House also to spell out how it would implement the domestic program cuts.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who supported the Senate’s version, said she hopes the report will pressure both parties to cut a last-minute deal that includes new revenues for the government.

“I think we all need to step back,” Murray told POLITICO. “Sequestration was never written into law to be enacted. It was written into the bill last August in order to force both sides to the table. Nobody should be saying it’s going to happen, but what we all ought to be saying is how do we get to a balanced approach so it doesn’t go into effect.”

“I think what the president’s report will do will add to that, of why we should not go to sequestration and why we need a balanced, fair approach,” she added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Obama and the GOP would each benefit politically if they cut an election-year deal that would create more certainty in the economy and at the Pentagon.

“I think this whole issue is going to impact the campaign,” said Graham, citing the prospective layoff notices from companies that rely on federal spending. “I will work with him to solve it. … He gets the benefit from solving the problem, so do we.”

Graham — who is touring swing states with Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and John McCain of Arizona warning about the impending defense cuts — said the OMB report would be the first big step toward cutting a deal.

Striking a compromise in an election year is no easy task. Graham, McCain and Ayotte have floated the possibility of raising some revenues by ending certain tax deductions, but many Republicans are steadfastly opposed to the idea. And the trio is also calling for a deal that includes some cuts to entitlements such as Medicare, an idea that causes the Democratic base to recoil.

“The sooner we get a detailed description of what comes the way of the country — the Defense Department and non-defense — the better off the country is,” Graham said.

Obama aides also would prefer that they don’t get to the sequester.

Testifying last week to the House Armed Services Committee, OMB Director Jeffrey Zients said “no amount of planning” would mitigate what “by design, is bad policy.”

“The right course is not to spend time moving around rocks at the bottom of a cliff to make for a less painful landing,” he said. “The right course is to avoid driving off the cliff altogether.”

But Obama officials have started planning, just in case. Zients sent out a memo last week telling federal agencies to begin discussions on what’s next if they get hit with the cuts — and some departments are already assembling their plans.

“The entire administration will be prepared,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters last month.

Sequestration amounts to a “meat ax” and “doomsday mechanism” by requiring about $55 billion in Defense Department cuts in the first year, Panetta has said repeatedly. Pentagon officials predict hiring freezes, furloughs, less training for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and even the potential for denial of medical services to veterans.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, officials estimated a potential 7.8 percent budget cut would mean fewer research grants at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, plus reductions in Head Start, child care and AIDS programs. HHS detailed the spending reductions in a letter sent last month to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Education Department Secretary Arne Duncan told a Senate panel last month that sequestration would also put more than 15,000 jobs at risk for teachers and teacher aides who work with low-income students. Schools serving military families could face “immediate cuts,” while special education programs can expect about $900 million less in their accounts, meaning layoffs of more than 10,000 teachers, teacher aides and other staffers.

Contractors who process student loans also could be chopped.

“The sequestration will put at risk all that we’ve accomplished in education and weaken programs that help children, serve families, send young people and adults to college and make the middle-class American dream possible,” Duncan said.

Some Republicans say Romney could benefit politically if he explains how he would begin to rein in big deficits.

“I hope he can be as specific as possible,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said of Romney.

Both campaigns are girding for the issue to become central to the debate this fall. Romney’s camp argues that Obama is “responsible” for the defense cuts. Obama’s team says it’s Romney’s “refusal” to agree to higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans that has hampered a deal with Republicans in Congress.

“It’s a very difficult political situation,” said John Scofield, a former House Appropriations Committee GOP staffer. He said the OMB report “should crystallize some of the harsh realities of sequestration which until now has only been referred to in big round numbers and percentages” but that the specifics are “not what you want to be doing a few weeks out from an election.”

Democrats counter that the OMB report will help show who is serious about dealing with the nation’s fiscal problems.

“For my two cents, I think helping the public understand the impact of sequestration could be a big plus for Obama,” said Scott Lilly, former Democratic staff director for the House Appropriations Committee. “There is little question that he and [House Speaker John] Boehner were forced to accept this by the more extreme elements of the Republican Conference and detailing what they would cut and how it would affect people’s daily lives helps voters understand the choice they face in November.”

Absent more details from the Obama administration, advocates for a wide range of other domestic programs fret over the impact of the cuts, especially on critical posts such as air traffic controllers, park rangers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents. They aren’t expecting to fare well against well-funded defense lobbyists.

“Until we know what it looks like, we’re just going to assume they’ll let the rats die in the labs and we’re going to take the cops off the beat,” said Scott Slesinger, the legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council who anticipates about a 12 percent cut at EPA, taking the agency to about $7.4 billion.

Projections are mixed for how sharp the spending cuts will be for non-defense discretionary spending. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates those government departments will see a 7.8 percent reduction across the board. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the cuts at 8.4 percent, while the Bipartisan Policy Center predicts the cuts could be as high as 9 percent.

Former White House chief of staff Bill Daley said the sequestration report would show how “Washington is broken.” But he said Obama shouldn’t be concerned with the political fallout of getting into specifics.

“I don’t think it’s going to be earth-shattering,” Daley told POLITICO. “It’ll make it more real. But I don’t know if it’s going to make people who were on one side jump to the other.”

Others are more skeptical, fearing everyone loses politically once the cuts are detailed for the public to see.

“That was the point of this,” said Jacque Chevalier, senior policy strategist for the National Parent Teacher Association. “The prospect of across-the-board cuts was so toxic that nobody would take it. And I think Congress and the administration lost that gamble. I don’t think there’s any way to massage it.”

© 2012 POLITICO LLC
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Although...there may be a bright spot here...a beneficial side effect.

IF Congress cannot get it's act together in time.
Then Obama has almost full discretion to cut where he wants...under executive powers.
And from my time being in the inside,
I do KNOW that Obama's adminstration is attempting with effort to streamline and economize where possible.
But Reps keep blocking due to their own interests.
This will give him the paint remover he needs, without individual Reps the ability to interfere with trimming.

I actually think I might like this...kind of like when Bush Sr. and Clinton got rid of unnecessary military bases.
(kept alive by their local Reps despite their inefficiency or lack of need anymore)

It's almost as if Congress suckered themselves into a limited line-item veto.
Hey, if this works out well...maybe we can make this into a new precedent for the president.

Or at least Congress, will learn their lesson...nah.

rogue49 · Aug 9, 2012

I don't know why everyone feels they need to be able to "have a beer" with the President.
Or that the President makes you feel intellectually inferior in some way.

I'd rather have the person in charge be thinking about the problems, doing something about the problems
not TALKING about it, not smiling at me for thinking he's just a super awesome guy.

But the America public would rather have the verbose used-car salesman,
than the charming professor who tinkers
the glam rich vs. the practical.

Americans SAY they want a good leader...then fall for the "Paris Hilton" of politicians, or The Donald. (great businessman, terrible pol)
Americans SAY they want someone who thinks about them, who cares about them...then goes for the one who'll give them away.
They ignore the actions & trends, but they listen to the comforting words.

It's like they're the person pining for love & stability who constantly hooks up with the bad girl/boy again & again.

I'd rather have the doctor that cures me, not just holds my hand while I'm in pain.
And it's not like they have BAD bed-side manner, or don't take the time to explain...they just don't give flowers or a card.

I don't get it.

The Ungrateful President
By MAUREEN DOWD - August 7, 2012

At a fund-raiser for the president at his Westport, Conn., estate Monday night, Harvey Weinstein spoke in a softly lit room shimmering with pink dahlias, gold Oscars, silvery celebrities and black American Express cards.

“You can make the case,” Weinstein said of Barack Obama, “that he’s the Paul Newman of American presidents.”

I interviewed Paul Newman. I knew Paul Newman. Paul Newman was an acquaintance of mine. Mr. President, except for the eyes, you are sort of like Paul Newman.

“I’ve been accused of being aloof,” Newman told me. “I’m not. I’m just wary.”

The star scorned the hoops he was expected to jump through in his profession and did not like feeling beholden. He said he dealt with fame by developing “selective insensitivities.”

“With film critics and fans, you have to be selectively insensitive to their insensitivities,” he told me. “If people start treating you like a piece of meat or a long-lost friend or feel they can become cuddly for the price of a $5 movie ticket, then you shut them out.”

Just so, the president does not think people should expect too much in return for paying $35,800 for an hour of his time, as they did at the Weinstein affair, or in return for other favors.

Obama smashed through all the barriers and dysfunction in his life to become a self-made, self-narrating president. His brash 2008 campaign invented a new blueprint to upend the Democratic establishment. So it’s understandable if Obama, with his Shaker aesthetic, is not inclined to play by the rococo rules of politics. Yet, as the president struggles to stay ahead of Moneybags Romney, his selective insensitivities may be hurting him.

Stories abound of big donors who stopped giving as much or working as hard because Obama never reached out, either with a Clinton-esque warm bath of attention or Romney-esque weekend love fests and Israeli-style jaunts; of celebrities who gave concerts for his campaigns and never received thank-you notes or even his full attention during the performance; of public servants upset because they knocked themselves out at the president’s request and never got a pat on the back; of V.I.P.’s disappointed to get pictures of themselves with the president with the customary signature withheld; of politicians disaffected by the president’s penchant for not letting members of Congress or local pols stand on stage with him when he’s speaking in their state (they often watch from the audience and sometimes have to lobby just to get a shout-out); of power brokers, local and national, who felt that the president insulted them by never seeking their advice or asking them to come to the White House or ride along in the limo for a schmooze.

Care and feeding has been outsourced to Joe Biden, who loves it, but it doesn’t build the same kind of loyalty as when the president does it.

“He comes from the neediest profession of all, except for acting, but he is not needy and he doesn’t fully understand the neediness of others; it’s an abstraction to him,” says Jonathan Alter, who wrote “The Promise” about Obama’s first year in office and is working on a sequel. “He’s not an ungracious person, but he can be guilty of ingratitude. It’s not a politically smart way for him to operate.”

Newman wanted to be an actor, not a movie star. Obama wants to be a policy maker, not a glad-handing pol. Sometimes after political events, even small meetings, he requires decompression time. Unlike Harry Truman or George Bush senior, he prefers not to mix relaxing with networking. He sticks mostly to golf with his male aides.

“Needy politicians, like Bill Clinton, recharge at political events,” says Alter. “But, for Obama, they deplete rather than create energy.”

Richard Wolffe, the author of Obama portraits, “Renegade” and “Revival,” agreed: “The very source of his strength as an individual, that he willed himself into being, that he’s a solitary figure who doesn’t need many people, is also clearly a weakness. There are people who’ve worked with him for years who don’t understand why he gives so little back.”

From the first time Obama made a splash with an anti-apartheid speech at Occidental College, says David Maraniss, author of “Barack Obama: The Story,” he has been ambivalent, even perverse.

“He realized that he could stir crowds while also thinking to himself that it was all a game and posturing,” the biographer said. “He is always removed and participating at the same time, self-conscious and without the visceral need or love of transactional politics that would characterize Bill Clinton or L.B.J. or even W., in a way.”

What will save him, Maraniss believes, is his fierce competitive will. “His is cool and Clinton’s is hot, but they burn at the same temperature inside,” he said. “So he does some of what he finds distasteful, but not all of it, and not all of it very well.”

One thing, though: Paul Newman sent thank-you notes.
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rogue49 · Aug 18, 2012

One of the best summations I've seen describing one of the political dynamics I've noted...

There's a weird mindset among some progressives that because Obama wasn't as progressive as they wanted, then the country should be forced to deal with whatever conservative revolution it gets, which will then lead to progressive utopia because through years of GOP rule, people will finally get how awesome the progressive movement is. This seems to be led by people who have never actually paid attention to politics and/or who don't understand the meaning of the phrase "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
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rogue49 · Aug 23, 2012

Interesting...will it make the difference?
Even if it does...will it make a big win for the Dems or a mandate scenario??

American Middle Class Slipping Behind Leans Toward Obama
By William Selway and Frank Bass - Aug 22, 2012

The middle class is shrinking and is now barely a majority in the U.S., underscoring the challenge President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face as they argue over who can best protect the wealth of struggling Americans.

The proportion of middle-income earners, or those making from $39,000 to $118,000 for a family of three, narrowed as the housing-market crash erased two decades of gains in wealth since 2001 and average incomes fell for the first time since World War II, a Pew Research Center report shows. The middle class shrank to 51 percent of adults in 2011 from 61 percent in 1971.

“We think of ourselves and pride ourselves as being a middle-class society,” said Paul Taylor, the center’s executive vice president and the editor of the report, released today. “But there’s a sense that the middle class is getting smaller. It’s hollowing out.”

Middle-class people are reluctant to lay much of the blame on Obama, with Congress, banks, corporations, the Bush administration and overseas competition more commonly cited as the cause of their problems, according to the survey. More than half, 52 percent, say Obama’s policies would aid the middle class, a 10-percentage-point advantage over Romney.

The report, “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class,” highlights the effects of the longest recession since the Great Depression that left 12.8 million currently unemployed and pushed more into poverty. The plight of middle-income Americans in an economy that has yet to fully rebound more than three years after the recession ended is a central theme of the presidential campaign.

Favoring Rich

Romney, who co-founded private-equity firm Bain Capital and served as Massachusetts’ governor, has faulted Obama for failing to spur a stronger recovery. Obama has cast himself as a defender of the middle class and criticized his opponent, who has an estimated net worth of as much as $250 million, for seeking to cut taxes on higher-income Americans.

Obama’s pitch may resonate with middle-income voters, the Pew poll indicates. Republicans favor the rich, according to 62 percent of self-described middle-class respondents. That compares to 16 percent who said the same of Democrats. The survey showed 37 percent said Democrats were more likely to favor their interests while 26 percent said that of Republicans.

“Obama is perceived as more sympathetic to the middle class,” said John Sides, who teaches politics at George Washington University in the nation’s capital and is working on a book about the election. “The challenge for Romney is that he is seen as someone who’s competent, but you want to be seen as someone who’s in touch. There’s enough of a gap there that it may be a liability for him.”

Inherited Crisis

In Columbus, Ohio, Marla Caslin, 62, said she blamed the economic collapse on Republican policies that fostered Wall Street excesses. She was fired from her $44,000-a-year job in the accounts-payable department of a gas company five years ago, and wound up on public assistance until she landed a job at the YWCA last year.

She said Obama has done the best he can with a crisis he inherited, while Romney’s wealth distances him from the plight of typical Americans.

“He can’t relate to us,” Caslin said as she waited for Obama to appear at a campaign rally.

The past decade was a drain on middle-income earners, the Pew study shows. Median household income, adjusted for inflation and household size, dropped 6.6 percent to $59,127 in 2010 from $63,277 in 2000, according to the Washington-based center.

Declining Wealth

The median wealth of all U.S. families, adjusted for inflation, dropped 39 percent from 2007 to 2010, when it stood at $79,431, just 7 percent higher than it was in 1983, according to the Pew report.

For middle-income families, which have almost half their wealth tied up in their homes, their median wealth increased 2 percent in 2010 from 1983. By comparison, the wealth of upper- income families jumped by 87 percent, the study shows.

It’s not just nongovernment workers who are feeling the pinch. In Atlanta, Rick Lagotta, 48, who has worked for the fire department for the past eight years and is a member of its union, said he has had to forgo raises, or use them to pay for higher health-care costs, as the economic rout hit the city’s tax collections.

He now earns about $38,000 a year, less than half of what some firefighters make because they started at a time when raises were common. With one child in college and another in high school, Lagotta has drawn on retirement savings from his prior job at a car dealership to avoid taking on a second job.

Stressed Families

“Everybody is out there trying to get part-time jobs, putting even more stress on their families,” he said.

The Pew study is based on an analysis of Census Bureau and Federal Reserve Board data, as well as a telephone survey of 2,508 adults from July 16-26, 1,287 of whom identified themselves as middle class. The poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, and 3.9 percentage points for the middle-class segment.

Most who consider themselves middle class say it’s a struggle to maintain their standard of living. Eighty-five percent say it’s harder to do than it was a decade earlier, according to Pew. Tight finances led 62 percent to reduce spending in the past year, compared with 53 percent who said so in 2008, soon after the onset of the recession.

Less Optimism

The rout has tempered middle-income Americans’ optimism. When asked about their children’s future, 43 percent said they would have a higher standard of living than their own, while 26 percent said it would be worse. That’s less sanguine than four years earlier, when 51 percent said the kids would be better off, and 19 percent said they wouldn’t.

In Lower Makefield Township, Pennsylvania, Frank Arcoleo, 59, who has relied on his wife’s income since his consulting business slowed, said he’s afraid his two teenagers won’t be able to match his standard of living when they’re older.

“I just don’t know what life is going to be like for my son,” Arcoleo said. “He’s having to be much more practical about his education than I ever had to be, because being well- educated isn’t enough. You have to have specific skills these days.”

Such worries aren’t uncommon. “It’s been a lot of years of bad times,” said Taylor, the Pew executive. “The mood of optimism is still there, but there’s a little less optimism than there used to be.”

®2012 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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rogue49 · Aug 29, 2012

Obama's still going after the youth vote...I wonder if Romney is doing the same thing?
I haven't seen anything on it.

Obama Courts the Votes of a Less-Engaged Youth
By JACKIE CALMES August 28, 2012

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Annie Hartnett was not old enough to vote in 2008 when she volunteered for the Obama campaign at the University of Iowa, where an older sister was a student. Now 21 and a leader of the Iowa State University Democrats, she said she was as excited as she was four years ago to be working for President Obama — yet she struggled to describe something that is missing.

“I would still say there’s as much excitement as before, but in 2008, well, there was much more of a ‘This is a new fresh start,’ ” Ms. Hartnett said. “When you’re voting for an incumbent, it’s not really a fresh start, right?” And enlisting other volunteers is less easy: “In ’08, I feel like people were way more, like, wanting to get behind it because it was new, there was a drive, energy.”

So on Saturday she was heartened as students waited in lines for two hours for tickets to see Mr. Obama on Tuesday as he made a tour of college campuses in an aggressive appeal for young voters even as Mitt Romney was being nominated in Tampa.

Each party used to keep a low profile during the other’s presidential convention week. But Mr. Obama, trying to expand his support among a crucial demographic group that tends to vote at lower rates than older Americans, was not standing down.

“I’m counting on you,” the president shouted to an estimated 6,000 mostly young people gathered outdoors at Iowa State, in Ames. “Those who oppose change, those who benefit from the status quo, they’ve always bet on cynicism, they always bet on complacency. But throughout America’s history, they have lost that bet. And they’re going to lose it this time, too.”

“I’m asking you one more time to do what we did, to do what young people all across the state of Iowa did four years ago,” Mr. Obama added.

From Iowa State, Mr. Obama went on to Colorado State University here for a rally Tuesday evening before heading back East on Wednesday to the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. That itinerary of three colleges in three swing states, just as students are returning, speaks to the importance of young voters to Mr. Obama’s prospects, and to his advisers’ concern about their level of engagement.

“I do think that they must be aware that there has been a real decline with younger voters and that there isn’t nearly the same amount of support for Obama and Democrats as there was four years ago,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

“What’s driving the decline,” she added, “is really the economy, the economic experience that young people are having.”

While Gallup’s recent daily tracking poll shows that 58 percent of voters under 30 currently support Mr. Obama, that is lower than he got in 2008, according to exit polls. Then, 18 percent of those who voted were under 30 — just one percentage point more than in recent elections, contrary to the widespread belief that young voters made up a record proportion of the electorate. But they voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama, 66 percent compared with 32 percent for Mr. McCain, a 34-point margin that was nearly double the point spread between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996.

Now the under-30 ranks include more than 15 million Americans who, like Ms. Hartnett, can vote for the first time. Yet in contrast to the atmosphere of hope and change that defined 2008, those newly eligible to vote have come of age in the worst economic downturn since the Depression. With college diplomas or, worse, without them, they enter an unwelcoming job market.

That backdrop and Mr. Obama’s role this time as the battle-scarred incumbent give encouragement to the Romney camp.

“You can only run on hope and change once,” Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney’s political director, said.

He conceded Mr. Obama’s advantage among young voters, then added, “We’re not going to win them, but we’re going to eat into the margins. And those are the margins where they need to run up the score.”

The Obama campaign is scrambling to do just that, especially on campuses in battleground states, sending student-volunteers out to promote Mr. Obama’s work to increase Pell tuition grants, limit interest rates on federal college loans and enact a health care law that allows people to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until age 26.

Other issues, like his support for abortion rights, contraception coverage and same-sex marriage, also are more popular with younger Americans than with any other age group.

Mr. Obama himself has pitched that record in 25 campus events this year, including four each in the battlegrounds Ohio and Florida. Aides say the number will increase in coming weeks.Michael Belding, 22, a graduate student at Iowa State, was a freshman there in 2008; while he voted for Mr. McCain, he recalled the pro-Obama electricity on campus then, and the “fun” of the election-night celebrations.

Now head of the student newspaper’s opinion page, Mr. Belding said, “I don’t hear as much about students getting involved in either campaign.”

Obama campaign aides say it is early; young people, like most Americans, are just now starting to tune in.

“The people are slowly getting excited,” said William J. Russell, the Democratic Party chairman of Larimer County, where Colorado State is located.

Mr. Obama drew 45,000 people at Colorado State right before the 2008 election. The police estimated Tuesday’s turnout at 13,000, one of the president’s biggest crowds to date, though the campaign limits tickets so he can better connect with his audience, advisers say. In interviews, a number of students, including self-described conservatives, said they remained undecided about Mr. Obama but do not like Mr. Romney.

The campaign has dispatched celebrities popular with young people to mobilize support, including the actors Kal Penn and John Cho, stars of the “Harold & Kumar” comedy films. Mr. Penn, who said he had campaigned in 16 states, drew about 200 students last week on a campus serving several colleges in downtown Denver and urged them to make sure they voted.

“It does matter very much,” he said.
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Xerxes · Aug 29, 2012

Today when I got off work and got on reddit, I saw that Obama did an AMA.

You guys didn't miss anything though, he answered the softest questions he could. Also, theres really no verifying it was him or his staff, so maybe he is spot-on on the targeting the youth.

rogue49 · Sep 1, 2012

An interesting future prospective of Obama's potential next term, drawn from his previous actions.

I wanted to pop this up to the top again,
because this is the guy that's going to be in spotlight for the upcoming DNC convention.

I wonder if the Dems are going to put a better show on than the GOP.

The night Obama first shone
By David Maraniss, Published: August 31

Barack Obama had other things on his mind and would rather not have been stuck in Springfield during those July days in 2004, but political realities left him little choice. The Illinois legislature was in session, and four years earlier the Chicago newspapers and his political opponents had scolded him for escaping to Hawaii and missing several days of a special session dealing with guns and urban crime. Lesson learned: He was now basically under orders to remain visible in the Senate chamber.

As the proceedings droned on, Obama kept a steady vigil at his back-row desk, four seats to the left of the center aisle, half-listening as he scrawled themes and phrases he might use in the most important speech of his career — the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Every now and then, he would stroll over to the rear alcove, snatch a handful of almonds from the bowl on the desk of Barbara Mason, the woman in charge of Senate telephones, and take a call from an aide to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had plucked Obama from relative obscurity to deliver the convention’s first high-profile, prime-time speech. One afternoon, as the convention approached, a Senate colleague, Jeff Schoenberg, walked into the men’s room behind the back row and found Obama editing copy on a stool over near the mirrors, pen in his left hand, cellphone in his right, working out wording with his political adviser, David Axelrod.

The history of Barack Obama and Democratic conventions is short and uneven. He had attended his first one as a public official only four years earlier — an ignominious start. Already depressed after losing a Chicago congressional primary that year, he took a cheap Southwest Airlines flight to the 2000 convention in Los Angeles, where he discovered first that his credit card was bouncing and then that virtually no one knew him or cared that he was there. He fled back to Chicago long before Al Gore smooched Tipper and accepted the nomination.

It is a sharp reminder of how suddenly Obama rose that only eight years later he was accepting the nomination himself. But what lasts from that 2008 speech? His presidential campaign took flight with soaring rhetoric, yet he was unable to lift a single memorable phrase with him into the history books that night. Perhaps the only two things that remain etched in the public consciousness are that the first African American nominee gave his acceptance speech on a propitious date, the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s immortal “I Have a Dream” speech, and that he was framed by some fake Greek columns inside the Denver Broncos’ football stadium.

But the 2004 speech Obama sketched out in the penalty box of the Illinois Senate chamber is the one that lasts, a presentation that made him an overnight sensation and set him on the path to the White House. Obama connected by finding the universal in the particular, presenting his own improbable rise — considering his name, his genealogical history and the color of his skin — as a symbol of American inclusivity and a common purpose that transcended red states and blue states, white and black, liberal and conservative.

On July 26, 2004, the night before his big moment, Obama called Marty Nesbitt, a pal from Chicago who had just arrived in Boston on a private jet with Penny Pritzker, one of the young politician’s wealthy supporters. Obama already sensed what was coming. “Hey, what’s going on? Do you want to hang out and see how my life has changed?” he asked Nesbitt. “Meet me in the lobby in the morning, and we’ll just kind of hang out together.” Nesbitt joined Obama on the circuit of breakfasts, lunches and rallies. “And he had this big speech, and he never mentioned it until we were walking down the street and this crowd started to build up behind him, and I said, ‘You’re like Tiger Woods, you know, at the Masters, a rock star,’ and he said, ‘You think it’s bad today, wait until tomorrow.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘My speech is pretty good.’ ”

As Nesbitt listened the next night, he was anxious for the first 30 seconds, then sensed something clicking. Obama was at the top of his game, wowing the delegates in the hall and millions of viewers at home. The theme of that speech seems distant now, if not naive, considering how the political divisions and animosities have hardened during the course of his presidency. Yet that first impression, how he acted and what he said in Boston, still provides important clues to Obama’s present and future.

For all of his other characteristics — his unease about schmoozing, his writer’s sensibility as a participant observer, what some misinterpret as aloofness — the essence of Obama as a candidate is that of a confident jock, the guy Nesbitt hung with the day before his speech. He thrives on competition and does not shrink from it. Anyone who has played basketball with him, or poker, or even ping-pong or golf, will say the same things about his trash-talking, his boasting, his need to win. I’ve often said of Bill Clinton and Obama, two of my biographical subjects, that Clinton is hot and Obama is cool, but they burn at the same temperature inside. Just do it — that is the Obama of the campaign.

But if he wins a second term, the Obama I expect to emerge will more closely follow the lines of his 2004 speech. The right wing has made a cottage industry out of portraying him as a shape-shifter, trained by socialists, whose true leftist ideology will come out in a second term. His history points in the opposite direction. As a young man negotiating the shoals of race in America, as president of the Harvard Law Review, as a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago and as a state senator in Springfield, his instincts were to search for common ground. It has proved harder in the White House than anywhere he had been before, and there is no guarantee it would be any easier during a second term. But that is where he sees greatness, and that is what will drive him — those same thoughts he scrawled out during those summer days eight years ago when he was confined to the Senate chamber in Springfield.

© The Washington Post Company
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rogue49 · Sep 2, 2012

BTW...Politfact's scorecard on fulfilling his campaign promises.
They don't pull punches.
Link - (there are tons of links within the article...I'll let you pick & choose what you want)
BTW...take a look at his listing of truths and lies...links on the side.

A scorecard on President Obama's campaign promises
By Angie Drobnic Holan, J.B. Wogan - September 1st, 2012

Has President Obama kept his campaign promises?

Four years ago, Barack Obama made an extraordinary array of campaign promises -- 508 pledges on everything from taxing the rich to ending the Iraq war.

He vowed to get health coverage for the uninsured and to safeguard the environment by capping carbon emissions. He pledged to push for comprehensive immigration reform and help homeowners after the housing market crashed.

Above all, he would change the tenor of the debate in Washington.

"We have a chance to bring the country together in a new majority — to finally tackle problems that Washington has ignored for too long. And that is why the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won’t do in this election," he said in Blueprint for Change, a campaign document that became his presidential to-do list.

PolitiFact has been tracking all 508 promises and keeping tally on the Obameter throughout his presidency.

Our scorecard shows Obama kept 37 percent of his promises. He brought the war in Iraq to a close and finally achieved the Democratic dream of a universal health care program. When the United States had Osama bin Laden in its sights, Obama issued the order to kill.

Sixteen percent are rated Broken, often because they hit a brick wall in Congress. Global warming legislation passed the House but died in the Senate. He didn't even push for comprehensive immigration reform. His program to help homeowners facing foreclosure didn’t even meet its own benchmarks. (PolitiFact rates campaign promises based on outcomes, not intentions.)

With four months left in Obama’s term, PolitiFact has rated Obama’s remaining promises Compromise (14 percent), Stalled (10 percent) or In the Works (22 percent).

One stands out as not only his biggest broken promise, but as an explanation for many others that have fizzled or failed: his pledge to bring people together for a bipartisan agenda.

"That, it seems to me, is the most important promise that the president has not been able to keep," said William Galston, a former Clinton administration aide who now is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and studies political polarization. "It will long be debated by historians whether he tried and failed, or didn’t really try at all."

This is an accounting of the promises Obama kept and failed to keep, and how bipartisanship eluded him at nearly every turn.

In the beginning: the stimulus

When Obama and the Democrats muscled the economic stimulus through Congress in the second month of his presidency, it contained a grab-bag of his promises -- tax credits for buyers of hybrid cars, Pell grants for low-income college students, and federal dollars for solar, wind and biofuel.

It included Race to the Top, an education grant contest among the states to encourage new testing standards, rewards for good teachers and more emphasis on math and science.

When Obama signed the stimulus into law on Feb. 17, 2009, he said it contained the ideas of both Democrats and Republicans, and it did include a hefty portion of tax cuts.

But the stimulus ended up passing with only three Republican votes in the Senate, and none in the U.S. House of Representatives. The recriminations started.

Republicans blamed Democrats for excluding them from negotiations, said Brian Darling, a senior fellow who studies government at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"It started out on a bad note," Darling said. "That’s when the well was poisoned, very early, during the stimulus debate."

As time went by, Democrats saw the Republican opposition as a purely political tactic: If the stimulus worked, Obama would get credit. If it didn’t work, Republicans would be able to throw their opposition back in Obama’s face during the next election cycle.

Planned or not, Republicans coalesced into a vocal, unified opposition.

"That became their strategy for the first two years of the Obama administration," noted Jonathan Alter in his book The Promise, a chronicle of Obama’s first year in office.

Republicans in Congress weren’t Obama’s only opponents. Days after signing the stimulus, CNBC’s Rick Santelli gave a commentary on the floor of the Chicago mercantile, slamming Obama’s plans to help people facing foreclosures and underwater mortgages.

"How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise your hand!" shouted Santelli. The traders surrounding him gave lusty boos.

"President Obama, are you liiiiistening?" he said.

Santelli said he was organizing an event to protest, and he called it a tea party.

Health care and other achievements

When Obama turned to health care, he got a sobering lesson in the ways of Washington.

In the Senate, negotiations started in April 2009 and then dragged on for months, sucking energy and time from his other initiatives. Meanwhile, the White House sacrificed promises on transparency and prescription drugs as it cut deals behind closed doors.

In exchange for concessions from prescription drug makers, Obama abandoned promises to allow imported prescription drugs from Canada, to give Medicare the power to negotiate for cheaper prescription drugs, and to prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs. And the negotiations did not take place on C-SPAN, as Obama said during the campaign. PolitiFact rated all four pledges Promise Broken.

Still, the final bill was packed with his promises. He earned a Promise Kept on 19 separate health care pledges, including requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions, giving tax credits to help people buy health care, and requiring large employers to contribute to national health care.

But again, the health law proved incredibly divisive. Republicans called it a government takeover of health care and worse, and the partisan lines hardened.

What didn’t get done

His success on health care came at a price. He ran out of political capital to spend on other promises.

A cap-and-trade bill to address climate change passed the House, but didn’t get a hearing in the Senate. Promises to help labor unions languished. And the administration largely ignored comprehensive immigration legislation, not even pushing to introduce the bill.

"Did Obama say he wanted to pass immigration reform? Yes, often. Did he make it a priority? No," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice.

And Democrats were still coming to grips with the unity and intensity of Republican opposition, Sharry said, and not just on immigration, but on the stimulus and health care.

Democrats had expected Republicans to be chastened after the 2008 elections and willing to compromise. But compromise never happened.

"The way the Republicans organized to say no to everything, the way they did it so ruthlessly and effectively, it was just mind boggling," he said.

Republicans take the House

The elections of November 2010 brought Republicans back to power in the House, with strong support from the tea party movement.

After the elections, Obama managed to hammer out a rare compromise with Republicans and Democrats. They agreed to postpone the expiration of a series of tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush that were due to expire at the end of 2010.

That agreement allowed Obama to fulfill promises not to raise taxes on families who made less than $250,000. But it also meant he broke his promise to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Even as Obama won the moment of compromise, he compared his negotiating partners with hostage takers.

"I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed," Obama said. "In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed."

When the new Congress convened in 2011, almost everything on Obama’s wish list that required legislative approval came to a grinding halt.

In addition to domestic policy, Congress kept the brakes on some of Obama’s foreign policy initiatives. Most notably, Guantanamo Bay -- the detention center for terrorism suspects that Obama wanted closed -- stayed open. We rated Obama’s pledge to close it Promise Broken.

And prospects for bipartisan compromise were raised and then dashed during the battle over the debt ceiling.

Republicans wanted spending cuts in return for what in years past had been a largely symbolic vote. Budget negotiations continued right up the last minute, finally coming to a conclusion on Aug. 2, 2011, when the two sides formally agreed to punt budget cuts to a super-committee.

In the meantime, the U.S. received a historic downgrading of its credit from the agency Standard & Poor’s. Then the super-committee failed, too. Looming for 2013: automatic, across-the-board spending cuts (called sequestration) that neither side really wanted in the first place.

As the elections have approached, Congress has turned away from law-making and toward campaigning. Obama no longer speaks of bringing Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda. PolitiFact rated that Promise Broken.

Back in 2004, Obama famously said, "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."

He doesn’t say anything like that today.

In a 2012 campaign ad, Obama sits alone in a room. He looks directly at the camera and goes through his overarching policy ideas. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for investments in education, energy and manufacturing, just as he promised in 2008.

This time, there’s no talk of bipartisanship.

"It’s a choice," he says, "between two very different plans for our country."

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redux · Sep 2, 2012

The problem with scoring a president on promises, and this president in particular, is the role of an obstructionist Congress intent in blocking nearly every initiative.

But I would agree that some Obama promises was the usual campaign rhetoric that goes back 200+ years.

rogue49 · Sep 3, 2012

redux said: ↑

The problem with scoring a president on promises, and this president in particular, is the role of an obstructionist Congress intent in blocking nearly every initiative.

But I would agree that some Obama promises was the usual campaign rhetoric that goes back 200+ years.
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I would agree definitely on GOP obstructionist tendencies during his first term.
The fact they are saying now that they "wanted him to succeed" is absurd.

I wish they could go back to promises with other presidents...but I guess that would be too much tediousness in effort & time.
Politifact is a new site...using modern media to track & trend.

While it would be easy to see the after affects...figuring out the old promises would be difficult against news articles and otherwise.
They might not be available.

I'd say he did decent...all things being considered.
I mean...they're tracking the GOP promises now...and they don't have a better track record.

Speaking of which...the top 10 list of kept vs. broken.
Link - again...the article has a lot of link...I'll let you pick & choose.

The lists: Barack Obama's Top 10 Broken and Kept promises

Here’s our list of Barack Obama’s Top 10 Broken and Kept promises, taken from our complete list of 508 promises that Obama made in the 2008 campaign. We've included links to our continuing coverage of each individual promise. You can also read our analysis of where he stands on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. The top 10 promises are listed in no particular order.

Top 10 Broken Promises

1. Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners

Obama created a fund, but it failed to meet its own benchmarks for helping homeowners. A special inspector general deemed the program "a colossal failure."

2. Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes

In 2010, Obama agreed to a deal with Republicans to extend the current tax rates for another two years. He will get another shot at keeping this promise if he wins re-election.

3. Close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center

Obama has consistently said he wants the facility closed, but he hasn’t found a way to get Congress to agree. Guantanamo Bay remains open.

4. Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming

A bill for cap-and-trade passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, but the Senate wouldn’t bite. Now Republicans control Congress, and it’s considered dead.

5. Sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize

This didn’t get done when Democrats controlled Congress, and now it looks as if it won’t get done at all, thanks to Republican opposition.

6. Allow imported prescription drugs

The White House dropped this pledge as it lured drug makers to get on board with the president’s health care law. The promise hasn’t been heard from since.

7. Sign the Freedom of Choice Act

Candidate Obama said one of the first things he wanted to do was sign abortion rights legislation. President Obama said he had other priorities and wanted to tamp down anger surrounding the issue.

8. Create a public option health plan for a new National Health Insurance Exchange

Congress rejected the idea for a public health insurance option open to everyone. Obama downplayed the fact that it was left out of the final version of the health care law.

9. Introduce a comprehensive immigration bill in the first year

Obama said he would introduce legislation that included a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. But other priorities -- health care and financial regulation -- seemed to run out the clock.

10. Bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda

On matters large and small, partisanship is worse than ever.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Top 10 Kept Promises

1. End the use of torture

Obama said he would stop the torture of terror suspects, and human rights experts say he did.

2. Seek verifiable reductions in nuclear stockpiles

In 2010, the Senate ratified a new START treaty for the United States and Russia to verify reductions in nuclear weapons.

3. Create new financial regulations

Obama signed a massive overhaul of financial regulations in 2010. It included a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look out for the little guy.

4. Sign a "universal" health care bill

Republicans may hate the individual mandate, but it allows Obama to make a credible case that the health care law will lead to universal coverage.

5. Extend the Bush tax cuts for lower incomes

A rare compromise with Republicans at the end of 2010 left in place current tax rates for middle-class Americans. What happens when they expire in 2013 is the great unknown.

6. Fully fund the Veterans Administration

It doesn’t get much attention, but Obama kept his promises on veterans, sending more money and resources to programs that serve them.

7. Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq

Obama did as he said, bringing the Iraq war to its conclusion. A Promise Kept for a huge campaign issue.

8. Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy

The policy that stopped gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military ended in 2011.

9. Raise fuel economy standards

Obama won increases for the required miles-per-gallon in cars, reducing oil consumption and carbon emissions.

10. We will kill bin Laden

On the campaign trail, Obama said the United States would go after Osama bin Laden if it got the chance. When U.S. forces found the terrorist in Pakistan, they took him out.
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rogue49 · Sep 13, 2012

I found this interesting...clear, concise...unambigous.

How Barack Obama Made His Fortune
By Walter Hickey | Business Insider – Tue, Sep 11, 2012

Two weeks ago, we looked at how Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for Vice president, made all of his money. The answer? Natural resources, land rights, and stocks, all invested in mutual funds and limited partnerships.

We got a lot of requests to do the same thing to Barack Obama, and for him the answer is much easier.

First of all, Obama has released copies of his tax returns, so we're able to produce hard numbers when it comes to what he makes.

Second, his investment strategies are much more coherent than Ryan's. Obama made his fortune from a few sources, and has it invested and stored in a few surprising — but also easy to track — ways.

We got the information from personal finance disclosures and released tax returns hosted by the Center for Responsive Politics.

So, here's a timeline of how Barack Obama went from middle class to a multimillionaire.

While he was an Illinois state senator, both parents in the Obama family were working

In his 2004 financial statements, Barack Obama indicated that he had three sources of income. One was an $80,287 salary from the Illinois Senate, where he was a state senator.

The other was a $32,144 salary from the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama taught as a lecturer while he was in the statehouse.

The third was Michelle's salary from the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she was an administrator.

While the picture is fuzzy before 2001, here's where Obama kept the money he made from Dreams From My Father in 1995 and his law career

The Obamas had investments in three different assets in 2004.

First was the Illinois State Senate Pension Fund, which Obama listed as worth something between $50,000 and $100,000.

The other two were investments in funds with Vanguard, the investment management company.

Obama had investments in the Vanguard Wellington Fund, which he evaluated as worth between $100,000 and $200,000. The Wellington Fund consists of around 60 to 70 percent stocks and 30 percent to 40 percent bonds and is essentially a fundamental mutual fund.

The Obamas also had $50,000 to $100,000 invested in the Vanguard Wellesley Fund. This Fund is more bond-heavy than most balanced funds, with exposure to around two-thirds bonds to one-third stocks.

He then scored a huge book deal after the 2004 Democratic National Convention

After giving the keynote address at the 2004 convention as a candidate for Senate — The speech, "The Audacity of Hope," was a slam-dunk that propelled Obama's popularity upwards in the years before his presidential campaign — Obama inked a number of book deals with Random House.

This is the real money.

He signed a deal for 2 nonfiction books and one children's book. One nonfiction would be The Audacity of Hope, an extended version of his 2004 speech. The children's book — we believe — became Of Thee I Sing, with proceeds going to charity.

Here are the terms of the book deals that made Obama phenomenally rich

After January of 2005, Obama will receive a $1.9 million advance on The Audacity of Hope.

For that book, the deal says that he gets 15 percent of the list price for Hardcover copies, 7 percent of the list price for the trade paperback version, then 8 percent of list price for the first 150,000 issues sold of the mass market paperback, then 10 percent of the list price thereafter.

He also gets 10 percent of Audio book sales. He would go on to win a Grammy for his recording, too.

Random House also republished his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, generating more sales.

By 2005, he had money in a number of different assets — including on again, off again political foe JP Morgan

Once he got the money, he didn't just let it sit in a bank account. He invested.

He got a JPMorgan Chase Private Client Asset Management account, worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. His checking account with Northern Trust was worth between $250,000 and $500,000, and he also banked with UBS.

He got $378,237 in royalties from Dystel & Goderich, his literary agent for Dreams From My Father, and another advance from Random House, $847,167.

By this point, he was worth between $1.1 million and $2.5 million.

From 2006 to 2007, he used the royalties from his books to buy a ton of Treasury notes

During the two years before his presidential run, he cemented his wealth.

In 2006 he got $147,490 for Dreams From My Father and $425,000 from Random House for The Audacity of Hope. In 2007, as his presidential run made him a household name, book sales skyrocketed. He got $815,971 for Dreams and $3.28 million for Audacity.

With the money from this, he made a number of consequential financial choices. He bought somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million worth of U.S. Treasury Notes. He moved the money from the two Vanguard Wellington Mutual Funds to the Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund, which invests based on "certain social, human rights, and environmental criteria."

In 2007, He also made one of his largest investments in Sasha and Malia's future

Obama in 2007 bought two Bright Directions Age-Based Growth Plans, one for Sasha and the other for Malia.

The plans will pay for their college educations. It's not clear which portfolio he went for — the Balanced, Aggressive, or Growth option — but each was worth between $50,000 and $100,000. By 2010, the portfolios were worth $100,000 to $200,000 each.

The year he ran for President he bought millions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury Bills

Likely distracted by the race, Obama didn't make any major changes besides investing even more in U.S. Treasury Bills.

By the time he was sworn in, Obama owned somewhere between $1.1 million and $5.1 million worth of U.S. Treasury Bills, comprising most of his net worth. His other assets were worth between $411,000 and $915,000. He did not collect any income from his books.

In 2009, he gave the approximately $1.4 million Nobel Prize money to these charities

When Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he told the prize committee to wire the money directly to the following charities:

$250,000 to Fisher House, which gives free housing to veterans and military families getting medical treatment.
$200,000, plus any remaining unallocated money, to the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund of the Clinton Foundation, a fund that helped rebuild Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.
$125,000 to the American Indian College Fund, which gives scholarships to Native Americans.
$125,000 to the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, which gives scholarships to low-income residents of the Appalachia region.
$125,000 to College Summit, an organization that aims to raise college enrollment rates.
$125,000 to the Posse Foundation, which provides full scholarships to extraordinary high school students.
$125,000 to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which gives scholarships to Latino students.
$125,000 to the United Negro College Fund, which gives scholarships to Black students.
$100,000 to Africare, an organization that builds wells and treats disease in Africa.
$100,000 to the Central Asia Institute, which focuses on education and public health, primarily for girls in Central Asia

Besides all of that, Obama is receiving compensation for his day job.

The President's salary is $400,000 per year. By now, he's received $1.6 million for his first term.
As a United States Senator, Obama was making $174,000 per year. Since he spent four years there, He banked around $696,000 over the course of his term.

All told, in his time in federal government, Obama made (pre-tax) $1.1 million.

His estimated net worth is between $2.8 million and $11.8 million in 2010.
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rogue49 · Sep 15, 2012

Now this is fascinating to me.
Not so much as this side or that side or in an ideological context.
But as to how anyone in power negotiates out who would be best placed to get the job done.

I took as much interest in it when GWB transitioned between terms.
And I look upon it almost as much as I do President...these are the people who set the tone, gives the face...gives the bureaucrats their orders.
Funny thing is...most people ignore it.

Actually, I've met some of these people when I was at the OMB, especially Jack Lew (nice guy, very smart & straight-thinking, sincere)
Humorously, I almost fell upon him when we were getting off the train. I tripped and careened right before him...thank god I didn't

So, here you go...speculation on the next potential "go-to" team (I haven't seen anything for Romney yet)

Obama second term: Team of insiders
By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei - September 14, 2012

President Barack Obama, if reelected, would surround himself with a retooled senior staff and Cabinet consisting largely of familiar faces and political insiders, plus at least one outsider to tend to the disgruntled business community, according to top Democratic officials.

Obama has put little personal time into sketching out what a second-term team would look like, and some decisions hinge very much on the outcome of the congressional elections. But behind the scenes, top officials are doing a lot of the sketching for him as a flood of top administration players — Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, David Plouffe and others — are planning quick exits, even if the boss wins.

The working assumption is that Obama will face a divided government and want badly to get something done, even if it means cutting far-from-ideal deals with a Republican House.

Jack Lew, the current chief of staff, is central to a lot of the West Wing discussions. Lew has told friends he wants to get out of government and move back to his native New York, where his wife, Ruth, has remained. But he could be persuaded to stay or move over to Treasury. Lew has a few things essential to replacing Geithner: Obama’s trust, strong congressional relationships and a squeaky-clean past that would allow him to be confirmed quickly.

If Lew were to leave his current role, Tom Nides, deputy secretary of state, would be a top, if not the leading, candidate to replace him. Nides and his wife, Virginia Moseley of ABC News, are close personally to the president and Michelle Obama. Nides has told friends he wants the job.

Ron Klain, the former chief of staff for Joe Biden, might have a shot, too. Klain, one of the sharper minds in politics, rubbed the president’s team the wrong way by making his desire to get the job in the first term too widely known. He has since redeemed himself, Democrats say, and has become especially close to senior adviser Plouffe.

Some White House insiders think Valerie Jarrett, the close friend and senior adviser to Obama, might make a bid for chief of staff — a move that would set off a furious fight with her internal detractors.

With the first 100 days, and probably the entire four years, likely to be dominated by the economy, most of the focus right now is on the economic team, and getting people with Hill experience and credibility. “A second term, when you are navigating a tough Hill environment, is no time to experiment,” said a Democrat who works closely with the current Obama team.

Another top Democrat, who would love to see some young thinkers brought in, said: “The insularity will continue.”

What is not entirely clear is whether Obama would plunge into a second term ready for partisan warfare, expecting scant GOP support again, or whether he would dedicate himself to cutting deals with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Right now, the betting among his advisers is that he will choose deal-cutter.

The direction he chooses could very well determine whether Lew lands at Treasury. There are some people close to Obama who would like Treasury to go to Erskine Bowles, the co-author of the deficit-reduction plan that will be central to the debate in the first 100 days. He is widely respected for his intellect, but many around the president are deeply suspicious of his loyalty.

Two men are actively lobbying for Treasury: Roger Altman, the former No. 2 at Treasury, and Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of the BlackRock asset-management firm, have indicated to colleagues they would like the spot. Tony James, president and COO of Blackstone, and Roger Ferguson, president and CEO of the financial-management firm TIAA-CREF, are also knocked around as more remote possibilities.

It is important to remember that few people can clear the modern vetting for the Senate confirmation process, which often cuts down the list considerably.

Obama has been trying to get a top corporate leader with authentic credibility in the business community to join his team for years now.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer and chief of staff at Treasury under Bill Clinton, might be asked to be Treasury Secretary or, more likely, to succeed Gene Sperling as director of the National Economic Council. The White House has been after her for some time now and she has told at least one insider she is interested but feels it would be impossible to leave given the wobbly state of her company’s stock price.

Steve Case, the America Online co-founder and now a major evangelist for startups, is another possible outside appointment, perhaps for Commerce Secretary. Dan Doctoroff, president and CEO of Bloomberg L.P., would be another possible ambassador to business.

“They have a problem they need to solve,” said a top executive close to the West Wing.

In negotiating a tax reform and fiscal grand bargain, the three most important jobs would be chief of staff, Treasury Secretary and budget director. Jeff Zients, the current acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, would love to take the permanent job, and will likely get it. Rob Nabors, now the legislative affairs director, and formerly the deputy head of OMB, would be another top internal candidate to lead the office.

Sperling would be considered to head OMB or be the U.S. trade representative, or perhaps might be rewarded with an ambassadorial appointment.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s term ends in early 2014. A top contender to replace him would be Larry Summers, Obama’s first White House economic adviser and Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton. Another possibility would be Janet Yellen, the current Fed vice chair. Geithner probably wouldn’t do it, but might. For Federal Reserve governor, one candidate would be Alan Krueger, now chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

John Podesta, chairman of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff and current wingman to Bill Clinton, could have almost any job he wants. Podesta has turned down earlier offers but left the impression with officials he might take a prominent role in running energy policy, perhaps as energy secretary. Jim Rogers, the chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy, who co-chaired the Democratic convention, is a possibility for energy, too.

Podesta’s close ally and friend, Jennifer Palmieri, who serves as deputy communications director, would likely stick around for an elevated role, perhaps replacing communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who may leave after the election or assume a broader role as counselor, senior adviser, deputy chief of staff, etc.

White House spokesman Jay Carney may stick around. But if he leaves, the very heavy favorite to replace him is Jen Psaki, a favorite of White House insiders. Carney’s principal deputy, Josh Earnest, also would be considered.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick would be a top bet to replace Attorney General Eric Holder. However, Holder has told people he wants to stay for a long time if he can.

There’s some intrigue on the secretary of state front. The next secretary of state is likely to be Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, or Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.). Rice has a close relationship with Obama and would be the likely choice today. One top Democrat said the second-term Cabinet will be “more personal picks” since Obama will be freer to nominate whomever he wants, with less regard to all the external factors that influenced many of the first-term choices. He is exceptionally fond of Rice, who has told friends she would like the job.

But Kerry impressed Obama aides with his convention speech and relentless effort on behalf of the campaign. The senator is playing the role of Mitt Romney in Obama’s debate prep. Kerry, whose efforts over the years to socialize with Obama have not been reciprocated, hopes the two will bond over the debates. But friends point out that his job in debate prep is to get up in Obama’s grill, not something this president is known to appreciate.

Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, would be considered for secretary of state, and could be persuaded to stay in his current job. His deputy, Denis McDonough, is an Obama favorite and would likely get a big promotion in 2013.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is enjoying his job and could probably be persuaded to stay another year, associates said. His most likely successor would be Ashton Carter, who gets rave internal reviews as Panetta’s deputy. An alternative would be Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defense for policy and now a top Obama campaign national security adviser. She would be the first female Pentagon chief. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) is perennially mentioned for the Pentagon.

Some other possible picks:

• Michelle Rhee, the former D.C. schools chancellor, is rumored as possible education secretary but is such a lightning rod that she likely will not get it. Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, chairman of the National Governors Association, is a possibility.

• Julius Genachowski would likely leave as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission after the election. A possible successor is Jessica Rosenworcel, a new commissioner who would be the first woman to head the FCC.

• At the Environmental Protection Agency, Robert Perciasepe, currently the deputy administrator, and an EPA air and water chief under Clinton, would have the inside track for the top job.

• If Elizabeth Warren were to lose her Senate race in Massachusetts or Tim Kaine were to lose his in Virginia, Obama might offer a Cabinet slot as a consolation prize.

Edward-Isaac Dovere, Burgess Everett, Jennifer Haberkorn, Jonathan Martin, David Rogers, Darren Samuelsohn, Glenn Thrush and Elizabeth Wasserman contributed to this report.

© 2012 POLITICO LLC
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Aceventura · Sep 16, 2012

President Obama MIA on Wisconsin union fight.
President Obama MIA on Chicago teacher union fight.
President Obama MIA on ME turmoil.
President Obama MIA on US budget.
President Obama MIA on immigration reform.
President Obama MIA on 2012 reported fiscal cliff.
President Obama MIA on inner-city murder rate and poverty, in particular his home town Chicago.

Why do so many people support President Obama for re-election? I think President Obama is close to being the worst President in US history.

Baraka_Guru · Sep 16, 2012

Aceventura said: ↑

Why do so many people support President Obama for re-election? I think President Obama is close to being the worst President in US history.
Click to expand...

I think it's more along the lines of worst liberal president in US history. After all, we need to keep G. W. Bush in mind; there's also Nixon and Hoover. Are we talking about all history or recent history?

If only Obama would act like a liberal.

ASU2003 · Sep 16, 2012

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on Wisconsin union fight.
Click to expand...

He can't do everything...But there was a lot of big outside money trying to eliminate all unions.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on Chicago teacher union fight.
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At least he isn't pulling a Reagan and busting the Union or forcing them back to work.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on ME turmoil.
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That a few right-win wackos started this time. Things were getting better or at least progressing.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on US budget.
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Obama had a budget that no one liked, which means that it was probably the right thing for the country. No one will like what needs to happen. He should have pushed the Simpson Bolwes plan, but the GOP doesn't want $1 of tax increases in their fantasy world.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on immigration reform.
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I think there was a Dream Act. Though it really is a second term thing.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on 2012 reported fiscal cliff.
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Same with the budget.

Aceventura said: ↑

President Obama MIA on inner-city murder rate and poverty, in particular his home town Chicago.
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Yes, some of the cities do need a lot of work.

Aceventura said: ↑

Why do so many people support President Obama for re-election? I think President Obama is close to being the worst President in US history.
Click to expand...

With what he has put up with, it is the Right-wing Republicans preventing him from doing more things. And the future under a Romney & Teapublican House/Senate would be horrible.

redux · Sep 16, 2012

Aceventura said: ↑

...

Why do so many people support President Obama for re-election? ...
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Probably because so many people are far more objective than your Fox "fair and balanced" analysis.

Especially the "elite smart people " (per Santorum) who will never support the right wing extremist agenda.

rogue49 · Sep 16, 2012

Aceventura said: ↑

Why do so many people support President Obama for re-election? I think President Obama is close to being the worst President in US history.
Click to expand...

If that's not a troll or hyperbole, I don't know what is.

The reason they support him are two-fold...

They like him and his efforts...if not his policies

They don't like the alternative.

It's as simple as that.
If you don't understand it, vote for the other guy...or don't vote.

Aceventura · Sep 23, 2012

redux said: ↑

Probably because so many people are far more objective than your Fox "fair and balanced" analysis.
Click to expand...

I don't pretend to be fair and balanced, I just know what I see and I know what I think - based on that, I draw my own conclusions. I actually spend more time listening or watching to MSNBC than Fox - I know what to expect from Fox and i get it, it is what comes from MSNBC that I find most confusing. For example how does President Obama get credit for following Bush's lead on many international issues but can pass the blame for the economy to Bush while again adopting the things that "got us in this mess, in the first place, following Bush's lead (i.e. - Bush tax cuts, deficit spending, signing legislation not paid for, etc)?"
--- merged: Sep 16, 2012 8:58 PM ---

rogue49 said: ↑

If that's not a troll or hyperbole, I don't know what is.

The reason they support him are two-fold...

They like him and his efforts...if not his policies

They don't like the alternative.

It's as simple as that.
If you don't understand it, vote for the other guy...or don't vote.
Click to expand...

The topic of Chicago schools came up in the past when Arnie Duncan was named Secretari of Education, at the time I made the editorial comment that I thought Chicago schools were the worst in the nation and that perhaps he needed to stay in that job and get results before moving on to a bigger job. I still hold that view. I recall at the time many here thought that was hyperbole. I also remember posts regarding the violence in Chicago long before Rahm Emanuel became Mayor. I recall at the time many here thought that was hyperbole. I was raised in a city about 30 miles outside of Chicago - I remember as a child the same empty rhetoric about solving problems as I hear today. Nothing, absolutely nothing has improved. Now on a national level President Obama makes the same empty promises we have heard for the past 50 years - when it is time to actually do something - MIA! Why is empty rhetoric enough? It is not enough for me. Neither hyperbole or trolling.

Note - the alternative to President Obama could have been a primary challenger, could be a third party person. There are some Democrats who get results and can lead, while holding similar policy positions on key issues. Everyone wants better schools, end to war, good healthcare, jobs, affordable housing, wages growing faster than inflation, etc., etc.
--- merged: Sep 16, 2012 9:06 PM ---

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

I think it's more along the lines of worst liberal president in US history. After all, we need to keep G. W. Bush in mind; there's also Nixon and Hoover. Are we talking about all history or recent history?

If only Obama would act like a liberal.
Click to expand...

All history. Bush accomplish many things of note. Nixon accomplished many things of note, he simply got entangled into a web a deceit and lies, but so did Clinton. Hoover's reputation has improved and many realize he took the majority blame for the Great Depression unnecessarily - but that he also accomplished many things of note. But if the point is Obama v Hoover, it is not a good sign for Obama.

On Hoover

For many years, both scholars and the American public held Hoover in extremely low esteem, blaming him for the Great Depression and criticizing his efforts to solve the crisis. Beginning in the 1970s, however, Hoover's reputation began to recover. Historians pointed out that Hoover's embrace of voluntarism, his faith in social science expertise, and his encouragement of cooperation between and among different segments of the American economic order was rooted not in heartless and reactionary conservatism but in the progressive social thought of his time. Hoover hewed to these approaches during his presidency, especially with commissions like the White House Conference on Health and the Protection of Children and the President's Committee on Recent Social Trends.
Even as the nation spiraled into the Great Depression, Hoover's faith in voluntarism and cooperation remained steadfast, leading to innovative and unprecedented government-inspired efforts such as the President's Emergency Committee on Employment, the President's Organization for Unemployment Relief, and the National Credit Corporation. Hoover also consistently lobbied state and local governments—and the U.S. Congress—to increase public works spending. At the same time, historians now acknowledge that Hoover sometimes abandoned voluntarism in favor of government interventions into the nation's economic affairs in the hope of ending the Depression with efforts like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Emergency Relief Construction Act. Finally, many historians, with the benefit of hindsight, argue that Hoover in reality could have done little to solve the Depression. They correctly assert that American entry into World War II—and not Roosevelt's New Deal—lifted the United States out of its economic doldrums.
Click to expand...

American President: Herbert Clark Hoover: Impact and Legacy

redux · Sep 23, 2012

Ace....your latest talking points are just baseless by any objective measure.

You dont need to be an elitist or even very smart to know that presidents dont get involved in state/local labor issues (Wisc, Chicago). Or that presidents can impact local crime rates like Chicago (if so, give Obama credit for the lowest violent crime rates nationwide in 20+ years)

You do have to be marginally objective to know that the Obama budget increases in 2010-2012 are at or near the lowest percentage increases in the last 10-20 years or that the pending "fiscal cliff" is more a result of the House Republicans reneging on the 2010 budget/spending sequestration agreement and leaving town until after the election.

Immigration reform takes the other side being willing to negotiate. An executive order that will potentially bring 1+ million hard working young people out of the shadows is certainly better than any Republican proposal.

The Middle East. I know you like the more bombastic, unilateral Bolton/PNAC approach that lead to the deaths of 4,000+ Americans at a cost of $1+ trillion and you more of the same?
--- merged: Sep 16, 2012 at 5:37 PM ---

Aceventura said: ↑

...

All history. Bush accomplish many things of note. Nixon accomplished many things of note, he simply got entangled into a web a deceit and lies, but so did Clinton. Hoover's reputation has improved and many realize he took the majority blame for the Great Depression unnecessarily - but that he also accomplished many things of note. But if the point is Obama v Hoover, it is not a good sign for Obama.

...
Click to expand...

You only need to be marginally objective to acknowledge Obama's first term legislative accomplishments, probably the most since Reagan.

The first significant health care reform, preventing an economic collapse (including the auto industry), implementing banking reform, credit card reform, student loan reform, ending dont ask/dont tell, doubling the investment in alternative energy research and development, signing new START treaty ....

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