Politics Obama - Actually doing a good job?

rogue49 · Feb 2, 2014

and this pretty much sums it up...

Everything is relative, I guess...

rogue49 · Feb 27, 2014

Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008

Can we like him yet??

Baraka_Guru · Feb 28, 2014

rogue49 said: ↑

Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008

Can we like him yet??
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You should have liked him years ago. Could you imagine if McCain or Romney were president?

rogue49 · Feb 28, 2014

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

You should have liked him years ago. Could you imagine if McCain or Romney were president?
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Actually, it's not them I was worried about as much as the people they'd have under them.
They picked very poor VP choices, especially McCain.
And in hindsight and supposition, McCain may have had us involved with God-knows military actions, from his following years' statements/opinion.

That's something people forget to consider when voting for prez.
Not just the person, but who they may bring in...often that's who makes the mess and rotten law/policy; not the leader themselves.

Obama's choices haven't been too bad so far...although I feel for a couple of them, how they'd taken the serious heat again and again.
It's difficult to judge, because you don't know how much is them...and how much is from the event or coming from above.
But when they do badly or idiotic, THAT is when you notice them.
Also, many are not all bad/good...some do stupid things, then in the long-run you find out they actually did good. (and vice versa)

rogue49 · Mar 4, 2014

So Obama gets to show his resolve in the Ukraine situation.
People are still trying to determine his MO.
And as far as I can see...there is no strict MO, but what's best for the scene, resources and for the nation overall...a very pragmatic leader.
Although, not fully aggressive...but I don't want that anyway.

Posted is the beginning of the article, linked are all the following opinion and theories. - Link
What do you think?

The Steel in Barack Obama’s Spine
In Ukraine, the president may face his toughest foreign policy test yet. Is he up to the task?
Politico - March 03, 2014

As Vladimir Putin’s troops seize control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, President Obama is facing what some have called the biggest foreign policy challenge of his presidency. True or not, it’s clear his response to this crisis will test him as rarely before. Will he risk a war in Europe to save Ukraine? Punish the Russians through sanctions and diplomatic isolation? Negotiate a face-saving compromise? Or let Putin have his way?

The world is anxious to see how this unlikely leader of the free world responds. But what kind of foreign policy thinker is Obama? Early in his tenure, he appeared an idealist, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, calling for a world without nuclear weapons and urging democratic reform in the Middle East and parts of Asia. But, as Fred Kaplan argues in the March/April issue of Politico Magazine, lately the president has proved himself more of a realist, willing to negotiate with the likes of Iran and refusing to get sucked into a raging civil war in Syria, despite a death toll topping 100,000. So what really drives Barack Obama’s foreign policy—the belief that he can and should make the world a better place or that America should intervene abroad only when the benefits to the United States are worth the costs?

In recent days, Obama has pledged his support for the people of Ukraine, calling Russia’s advance a violation of international law and threatening to “isolate” Moscow through economic and diplomatic means. But how far will Obama be willing to go to protect Ukrainian sovereignty? Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and an arch-realist, said in an interview with Politico Magazine that Obama’s “eminently sensible” approach so far in dealing with Russia is yet more evidence that the 44th president is also a realist. “Realism doesn’t mean you immediately start an atomic war,” Brzezinski said. “You first, discourage, deter, punish and isolate through other means … enough to make the Ukrainian adventure very costly to the Russians.” We asked seven other foreign policy thinkers to weigh in on how Obama sees the world—and what it means for the days ahead in Ukraine.
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rogue49 · Mar 4, 2014

Oh yeah, dealing with the media...that's one more instigator to this fiasco.
No wonder Presidents go grey fast...

Don't listen to Obama's Ukraine critics: he's not 'losing' – and it's not his fight
The ‘do something’ pundits rear their heads. Just like they did on Iraq, Afghanistan and every other crisis of US ‘credibility’
theguardian.com, Monday 3 March 2014

The armchair class is certain that Putin is winning and Obama is losing. But the exact opposite is true Photograph: Pete Souza / White House via EPA
In the days since Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into the Crimea, it has been amateur hour back in Washington.

I don’t mean Barack Obama. He’s doing pretty much everything he can, with what are a very limited set of policy options at his disposal. No, I’m talking about the people who won’t stop weighing in on Obama’s lack of “action” in the Ukraine. Indeed, the sea of foreign policy punditry – already shark-infested – has reached new lows in fear-mongering, exaggerated doom-saying and a stunning inability to place global events in any rational historical context.

This would be a useful moment for Americans to have informed reporters, scholars and leaders explaining a crisis rapidly unfolding half a world away. Instead, we’ve already got all the usual suspect arguments:

Personality-driven Analysis

Let’s start here with Julia Ioffe of the New Republic, a popular former reporter in Moscow who now tells us that Putin has sent troops into Crimea “because he can. That’s it, that’s all you need to know”. It’s as if things like regional interests, spheres of influence, geopolitics, coercive diplomacy and the potential loss of a key ally in Kiev (as well as miscalculation) are alien concepts for Russian leaders.

Overstated Rhetoric Shorn of Political Context

David Kramer, president of Freedom House, hit the ball out of the park on this front when he hyperbolically declared that Obama’s response to Putin’s actions “will define his two terms in office” and “the future of U.S. standing in the world”.

Honorable mention goes to Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group for calling this crisis “the most seismic geopolitical events since 9/11”. Putting aside the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Arab Spring, Syria’s civil war and tensions in the South China Sea, Bremmer might have a point.

Unhelpful Policy Recommendations

Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of Nato, deserves a shout-out for calling on Nato to send maritime forces into the Black Sea, among other inflammatory steps. No danger of miscalculation or unnecessary provocation there. No, none at all.

Inappropriate Historical Analogies

So many to choose from here, but when you compare seizing Crimea to the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, as Leonid Bershidsky did at Bloomberg View, you pretty much blow away the competition.

Making It All About Us

As in practically every international crisis, the pundit class seems able to view events solely through the prism of US actions, which best explains Edward Luce in the Financial Times writing that Obama needs to convince Putin “he will not be outfoxed”, or Scott Wilson at the Washington Post intimating that this is all a result of America pulling back from military adventurism. Shocking as it may seem, sometimes countries take actions based on how they view their interests, irrespective of who the US did or did not bomb.

Missing from this “analysis” about how Obama should respond is why Obama should respond. After all, the US has few strategic interests in the former Soviet Union and little ability to affect Russian decision-making.

Our interests lie in a stable Europe, and that’s why the US and its European allies created a containment structure that will ensure Russia’s territorial ambitions will remain quite limited. (It’s called Nato.) Even if the Russian military wasn’t a hollow shell of the once formidable Red Army, it’s not about to mess with a Nato country.

The US concerns vis-à-vis Russia are the concerns that affect actual US interests. Concerns like nuclear non-proliferation, or containing the Syrian civil war, or stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Those are all areas where Moscow has played an occasionally useful role.

So while Obama may utilize political capital to ratify the Start treaty with Russia, he’s not going to extend it so save the Crimea. The territorial integrity of Ukraine is not nothing, but it’s hardly in the top tier of US policy concerns.

What is America’s problem is ensuring that Russia pays a price for violating international law and the global norm against inter-state war. The formal suspension of a G8 summit in Sochi is a good first step. If Putin’s recalcitrance grows – and if he further escalates the crisis – then that pressure can be ratcheted up.

But this crisis is Putin’s Waterloo, not ours.

Which brings us to perhaps the most bizarre element of watching the Crimean situation unfold through a US-centric lens: the iron-clad certainty of the pundit class that Putin is winning and Obama is losing. The exact opposite is true.

Putin has initiated a conflict that will, quite obviously, result in greater diplomatic and political isolation as well as the potential for economic sanction. He’s compounded his loss of a key ally in Kiev by further enflaming Ukrainian nationalism, and his provocations could have a cascading effect in Europe by pushing countries that rely on Russia’s natural gas exports to look elsewhere for their energy needs. Putin is the leader of a country with a weak military, an under-performing economy and a host of social, environmental and health-related challenges. Seizing the Crimea will only make the problems facing Russia that much greater.

For Obama and the US, sure, there might be less Russian help on Syria going forward – not that there was much to begin with – and it could perhaps affect negotiations on Iran. But those issues are manageable. Meanwhile, Twitter and the opinion pages and the Sunday shows and too many blog posts that could be informative have been filled with an over-the-top notion: that failure to respond to Russia’s action will weaken America’s credibility with its key allies. To which I would ask: where are they gonna go? If anything, America’s key European allies are likely to fold the quickest, because, you know, gas. And why would any US ally in the Far East want Obama wasting his time on the Crimea anyway?

You don’t have to listen to the “do something” crowd. These are the same people who brought you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other greatest hits. These are armchair “experts” convinced that every international problem is a vital interest of the US; that the maintenance of “credibility” and “strength” is essential, and that any demonstration of “weakness” is a slippery slope to global anarchy and American obsolescence; and that being wrong and/or needlessly alarmist never loses one a seat at the table.

The funny thing is, these are often the same people who bemoan the lack of public support for a more muscular American foreign policy. Gee, I wonder why.
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BTW...are there any other historical crises that we're going to have to make Obama retred???
The Great Depression
Pirates in Africa
The Cold War
Korea

Let's try to avoid the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil War please...

Baraka_Guru · Mar 4, 2014

I get the impression that people still believe in "Leader of the Free World."

rogue49 · Mar 7, 2014

Pretty much says it all...then again, I could say it for other Presidents too.

rogue49 · Mar 14, 2014

Nuff said...

Ok, I lied...one more...

It's just too easy...

rogue49 · Mar 24, 2014

This is interesting.
And I wonder how Obama's techniques are working for him within the current international crisis too?
I'm sure there are both Strengths & Weaknesses about it. (pundit opinions not withstanding. )

Personally, I'd be wary of Carter's input too.
He can be in his own ideology and agenda at times...often a mixed bag of tricks.
His focus, is not everyone else's focus. He's more of a idealist.

I'd see Obama calling up Clinton more often, he was a bit more on the same page values-wise,
Politically astute and also understanding of Realpolitik without being fully ruthless.

Jimmy Carter Reveals Obama Is Only President Who Doesn't Call Him for Advice
The Wrap By L.A. Ross - March 21, 2014

President Barack Obama does not call the oldest surviving former president for advice.

That's according to former president Jimmy Carter, who told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell in an advance clip of Sunday's “Meet the Press” that he and the current president have a fractured relationship over Middle East policy.

“That's a hard question for me to answer, you know, with complete candor,” Carter said in response to Mitchell's question about why Carter's other successors — Clinton, both Bushes, and even Reagan — called upon him, but not Obama.

“I think the problem was that — in dealing with the issue of peace in between Israel and Egypt — the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn't want to be involved,” he added.

Carter famously brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. He said that Obama's policy toward the area, which he delivered in his 2009 Cairo Speech, may be at odds with Carter's approach.

“But I can understand those sensitivities. And I don't have any criticism of him,” Carter said.
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rogue49 · Mar 26, 2014

I don't know if this is "a bid" as connecting with another world leader.
From what I've seen, Obama's movements tend to be more sincere than Machiavellian.
At least, that's what I've noted from my experience.

Besides, most presidents meet with the Pope sooner or later, this one is a new one.
You could say that the Pope is hoping to leverage the leader of the world's most powerful nation.
But I don't see that in this Pope's personality either.

Why can't people just leave it at a normal level??

Obama’s Meeting With Pope Seen as Bid for Hope-and-Change Encore
By Margaret Talev - Mar 26, 2014

He has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular figures, a hope-and-change symbol cultivating an outsider’s image to repair his organization’s reputation and shape global attitudes.

That was Barack Obama in 2008. Now, the president is seeking to recapture some of that public affection by getting close to a leader who plays that role today, Pope Francis.

Obama will meet tomorrow with Francis at the Vatican as the American leader struggles with declining influence at home and abroad. He’s also trying to gain favor with two of the pope’s main constituencies in the U.S.: the working poor and Hispanics.

Obama, who’s in Europe this week, has been seeking allies for his push for gay rights and against Russian expansion, and for his domestic priorities of reducing income inequality and finding a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“The attendant media that will go with meeting one of the most admired figures today on Planet Earth has the potential to do nothing but help” Obama, said Jim Nicholson, who was U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President George W. Bush. “Not just with Catholics,” Nicholson said, “but with non-Catholics, who are also very fond of this pope.”

Birth Control

To be sure, the first black U.S. president and the first pope from the Americas disagree on significant social issues. Among them: gay marriage, abortion and birth control -- a topic in the headlines again this week when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments from Christian employers challenging a contraceptive mandate in Obama’s signature health-care law.

“But this pope has tried to move away from talking about those types of issues, sexual issues,” said John C. Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron in Ohio who has studied the connection between religion and U.S. elections.

Francis has “tried to focus on economic issues,” and “that return to balance certainly fits with the president’s agenda.”

In November, the pope decried the growing global income gap, saying it was fueled by “trickle-down” theories of economics, and condemned the “idolatry of money.”

“How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?” he wrote in an apostolic exhortation.

Bishop Resigns

Today, a day before Obama’s visit, Francis accepted the resignation of a German bishop whose lavish spending on residential renovations became a national controversy and clashed with Francis’ approach.

Obama quoted Francis’ exhortation in a December speech on economic mobility, saying, “Across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length.”

Catholics’ role in U.S. politics is shifting with societal trends, especially the rising Hispanic population, according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center.

While Catholics comprised one in four U.S. voters in 2012, their partisan preferences divided along ethnic lines, with 41 percent of white Catholics identifying as Democrats compared with 63 percent of Hispanic Catholics.

Hispanics make up about one-third of U.S. Catholics, a share that’s on track to grow. Hispanics comprised 47 percent of Catholics under age 40, compared with just 16 percent of Catholics age 65 and older.

Reagan’s Bond

The relationship between popes and U.S. presidents dates to the start of the republic, when Pius VI asked George Washington, via Benjamin Franklin, if it was all right to name a bishop to the new country. He was told that it was.

After a long stretch of anti-Catholic sentiment in the U.S., several 20th century presidents considered full diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Still, it didn’t happen until 1984, under President Ronald Reagan. Reagan and Pope John Paul II forged a powerful bond against communism.

It’s not clear if Obama can create a modern-day version of that alliance with the first Latin American pope, who made headlines from the start for riding the bus, hugging a severely deformed man and taking a more inclusive approach toward gays.

Catholic Voters

Green said Obama’s relationship with U.S. Catholics tends to break into subgroups: “Traditional” white Catholics generally don’t support him; “progressive” whites reward him for his passage of the Affordable Care Act and campaign for income equality; and Hispanics, some of whom are frustrated over the lack of progress on immigration legislation.

Linking himself with the Argentina-born Francis probably helps Obama, 52, across all three groups, Green said, considering that some of the president’s Republican critics in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, are Catholics.

“When their leader speaks about the poor and reducing income inequality, that can have an impact,” Green said of those lawmakers and the pope.

A Pew survey this month found 85 percent of American Catholics and two-thirds of adults had favorable views of Francis at his one-year mark, with 68 percent of U.S. Catholics saying the pope represents change for the better in the church.

Cultivating Inclusion

That gives Obama “an opportunity to bolster his popularity and show he works with popular people who are admired around the world and not just argues with unpopular people,” Green said.

Obama met Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in 2009, when Obama’s job-approval rating was 58 percent in polling by Gallup, compared with 44 percent now. Benedict’s level of popularity never approached that of Francis now.

Francis cultivates “feelings of inclusion rather than exclusion,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Catholic who is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.

“We as a party are committed to helping struggling people and being sensitive to the needs of the poor, and I think the pontiff’s message has been very pointed in those areas,” he said.

As was true with Obama, Francis’s followers will be watching to see how effective he is at making the changes that many Catholics are seeking. After a year on the job, Pew found, 54 percent of Catholics gave the pope excellent or good marks for handling the sexual abuse crisis in the church.

Pew also found an appetite for other changes, with 77 percent of U.S. Catholics in a February survey saying the church should allow birth control, 72 percent saying priests should be able to marry, 68 saying women should be able to be priests and half saying the church should recognize gay marriages.
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rogue49 · Mar 28, 2014

Why do I think the public are like bad managers...who look at you working your ass off...and say, "What have you done for me lately??"

This likely applies to any president, not just Obama, who's in at the moment.
And it is the public at large (both voter & non-voter).

They want what they want when they want it.
And they blame whomever is at the top.

They don't care about last week.
They don't care what limits you have.
They don't care what you've done before.

Just fix it. Just make it happen. How could you let this happen in the first place? ...etc and so on.
Every bad manager cliche in the book, spout out in the polls and media.

No wonder presidents go gray so quick.
I wouldn't want to be president...who needs that shit?

And the public complains...yet they are the ones voting them in.
A bunch of brats having a hissy fit they aren't getting what they want...but they don't know what they want.
But they know you aren't giving it.

ASU2003 · Mar 30, 2014

It will be interesting to see if the Pope comes to the US later this year. The Right Wing in the US just wants to harp on the sexual issues and are doing a good job dividing the country and reducing the numbers of church-goers. But, it will be interesting to see if the Pope can help move the conservatives on the other social issues. Poverty, immigration, environmental...

rogue49 · Mar 31, 2014

These are the things that define a presidency...just like GWB's was by 9/11 and the start of the Great Recession.

Obama’s overseas trip: 5 big takeaways
By: Carrie Budoff Brown and Edward-Isaac Dovere - March 30, 2014

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Barack Obama zigzagged across Europe to the Middle East this week, from the Hague to Brussels, Rome and Riyadh.

He played the role of chief diplomat, taking a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin to reopen talks on a diplomatic resolution in Crimea from his hotel room here in Riyadh — capping a trip dominated by the crisis that didn’t even exist when the itinerary was booked months ago.

He ended the week with a fence-mending meeting Friday in King Abdullah’s desert retreat, a sitdown intended to address dissatisfaction — on the U.S.’s Iran policy and Syria inaction — from a key Middle Eastern ally.

But Obama also got the chance to play the role of American tourist at some of Europe’s most storied landmarks. And he received a private audience with Pope Francis, drawing inspiration from the wildly popular Catholic leader — along with some heat from top Vatican officials on the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.

POLITICO traveled with the president this week on his journey. Here are our main takeaways from the trip:

Second-term pivot to foreign policy

Ukraine stole the headlines, but Obama laid some groundwork on a number of simmering foreign policy battles that could define his second term.

Ahead of a trip next month to South Korea and Japan, Obama brought together the leaders of the estranged countries for their first face-to-face meeting. The strained relationship has complicated U.S. efforts to respond to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s growing assertiveness in the region.

The Middle East peace process came up throughout the week, as the president works to deliver a framework for future talks by late April. The Syria conflict and the Iran nuclear talks, which face a July deadline, dominated meetings with Abdullah and Mohammed Bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. And despite resistance from Democrats in Congress, Obama plugged away at trying to secure a transatlantic free trade deal by the end of the year.

Succeeding in any one of these areas would be a major second-term accomplishment.

Taken together, the week displayed an Obama foreign policy agenda that looks more robust and consequential than his domestic agenda, which has stalled in Congress, forcing the president to use his “pen and phone” to notch small victories.

Europe is still enamored

Obama’s approval numbers are at their lowest point ever. Members of Congress who face voters this fall don’t want to be anywhere near him.

But in Europe — where Obama’s always been more popular — the love affair is still going strong.

It wasn’t just the crowds that lined the streets of Brussels, Rome and The Hague to catch a glimpse of his motorcade.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resembled an eager puppy when he joined Obama at a press conference Thursday, and he was no less enthusiastic during his private session.

Renzi’s just a few weeks into the job, but his excitement standing next to the president was like a time warp back to the days when just saying the words “hope” and “change” was enough to make people burst into tears of joy and anticipation.

“Your first message, ‘Yes, we can,’ is a message that we all remember, and we see this as being a huge potential, showing us that there are possibilities, opportunities,” Renzi told Obama under the lushly painted ceilings in the room where they met reporters. “And this is an important message for us in Italy as well, because we have to say in Italy today that we know that things need to change, that people don’t need to ask us to change from the outside.”

He’s even, Renzi said, decided to call his own economic revival bill the “Jobs Act,” with an Italian accent.

American polls show people aren’t impressed with Obama’s handling of Putin. Republicans attack him for projecting what Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) this week on MSNBC called “timidity, permissiveness, weakness,” and a lot of Americans feel that creeping into their own brains, too.

Not Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who standing with the president himself on Tuesday said, “I really applaud President Obama’s role in all these major issues. And it is necessary because the United States is leader of the free world and needs to provide that leadership, and he is doing that.”

Obama (and his staff) really digs the pope

The almost hour-long meeting with Francis appeared to live up to the high expectations of both the president and his senior White House staff, who formed the core of the U.S. delegation.

Aides like White House press secretary Jay Carney, deputy chief of staff Alyssa Mastromonaco and senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer walked in a synchronized procession through the Apostolic Chapel, each assigned their own Papal Gentleman dressed in long coattails. They stepped up one by one to greet Francis, each telling him that they are a “great admirer” — the same phrase used by the president — and received a heavy medal with the pope’s image in return. Aides described the day as surreal.

There was a lot of speculation ahead of the meeting that Francis would personally press Obama over the contraceptive mandate, which is strongly opposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But Francis left that task to his secretary of state, who met separately with the president.

Instead, Obama said, he and Francis spent their time talking about fighting income equality and conflict abroad.

Obama felt a kinship with Francis, the aides said, because of their shared interests, even though they do disagree on abortion, embryonic stem research and contraceptives.

When reporters and photographers were summoned back to the papal library after the meeting, the president, who appeared earnest and reserved during his initial greetings, looked far more relaxed. He said he had bonded with Francis over the strict protocols that dictate their lives, joked that a book he received would calm him in the Oval Office and invited the pope to visit the United States.

“Como no,” Francis responded — Spanish for “why not?”

The NSA spying? Oh yeah, the NSA spying…

Europeans tend to have a thing about privacy. European leaders had an even bigger thing about revelations, courtesy of Edward Snowden, that the American government was spying on their personal conversations. Last year, the continent was riveted by Snowden’s revelations.

What a difference a year — and a uniting crisis in Ukraine — makes.

On Obama’s September trip to Stockholm and Russia, administration officials said there was barely any escape from conversations about the revelations, and questions about what U.S. policies Obama was going to change in response.

Back then, Chancellor Angela Merkel was at the forefront of the fury. These days, she and Obama are working completely in sync on their response to Vladimir Putin. And the rest of the leaders seem to have shifted their focus too.

“I’d like to be completely candid,” said deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, speaking on Air Force One after the main European meetings had wrapped. “It has not come up frequently at all.”

Rhodes said the situation was helped by the plan Obama announced Tuesday to revamp the bulk phone data collection that was perhaps the most controversial part of the NSA revelations at home.

It’s not clear how the administration will actually look to redefine “bulk,” whether phone companies will agree to its proposals or whether Congress will sign off on them. But those announcements, combined with moves the administration has already announced publicly and privately, have made a difference, Rhodes argued.

“I think the combination of the fact that we’ve announced some reforms, [and] we’ve briefed our European allies on those reforms, it addresses a process that will allow for us to grant more protections to European citizens and European heads of state in terms of how we conduct surveillance,” Rhodes said. “And then, when you also factor in the fact that we’re dealing with Ukraine, it just hasn’t been the same level of topic that it was in the past.”

Obama, tourist-in-chief

The president apparently doesn’t love attending summits. They’re gabfests, usually hosted in a picturesque locale that Obama can’t get out to enjoy. Of course, that’s story of his life as president.

So the White House staff built in cultural stops to help him feel a little less cloistered.

He admired paintings at the Rijksmuseum, a national museum art museum in Amsterdam, and marveled to the press about them.

“I’m proud to be with some of the Dutch masters who I studied in school, and to see just the extraordinary traditions of this great country,” Obama said.

He placed a wreath at Flanders Field cemetery, where he read poetry about those who fought and died there.

And he toured the Colosseum in Rome just before dusk Thursday at the end of a whirlwind day.

Obama wandered slowly through the amphitheater, emptied of all tourists, admiring the ancient archways, the maze of tunnels and its massive scale.

“This is bigger than some current baseball stadiums,” he said, mentioning Chicago’s Wrigley Field. “I have to check on what it seats. It’s remarkable. Unbelievable.”

© 2014 POLITICO LLC
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Obama's has been
weathering the Afghanistan war.
weathering the long emergence from the Great Recession
weathering the hostile opposition in the GOP
weathering the implementation of the ACA
weathering now the Russians

There is good and bad for all of it...but he likely needs more weather stripping by now.

rogue49 · Apr 4, 2014

Yep, pretty much says it all.
Unfortunately, the other side does it also, when places are switched. *sigh*

rogue49 · Apr 10, 2014

If Obama is smart, he's put out a "Get out the Vote" marketing campaign.
Not for any particular party...just overall.
That's how he can get away with funding it.

But the more people who vote, the trend is in the Dems favor.
That's why the GOP is favored, because they tend to vote more than Dems in mid-term elections.

But I doubt it will happen, the Obama administration is poor at marketing.
If they were good at it, then they would have done better advertising on the ACA before the initial fiasco.

But at least his disapproval ratings are fading a bit.
I'm surprised that Rasmussen polling gave him a +1 lately, they tend to poll down for him. (maybe 538's call-out got to them finally)

rogue49 · May 2, 2014

Nuff Said.

rogue49 · May 4, 2014

Ok, I don't know if you like his politics or policy...but you got to admit he's got a good wit. (or at least good timing)

Obama’s 10 Best Wisecracks at Annual Washington Media Dinner
By Derek Wallbank - May 4, 2014

President Barack Obama, following tradition, tried his hand at stand-up comedy last night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

Here are 10 of his best one-liners:

- “I usually start off these dinners with a few self-deprecating jokes. After my stellar 2013, what could I possibly talk about?”

- “At one point things got so bad, the 47 percent called Mitt Romney to apologize.”

- “In 2008 my slogan was ‘Yes We Can.’ In 2013 it was ‘Control-Alt-Delete.’”

- On the dinner’s comedian host, Joel McHale, and the gala’s reputation: “On ‘Community’, Joel plays a preening, self-obsessed narcissist. So this dinner must be a real change of pace for you.”

- On CNN: “I am a little jet-lagged from my trip to Malaysia... the lengths we have to go to get CNN coverage these days.” Obama followed up saying that lost-Malaysian-plane -obsessed CNN was probably still trying to find its table.

- On the Boston Marathon: An American winning the Boston Marathon was inspiring and “only fair, because a Kenyan has been president for the last six.”

- On Fox News and the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency: “Let’s face it Fox, you’ll miss me when I’m gone. It’ll be harder to convince the American people that Hillary was born in Kenya.”

- On Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy: “As a general rule, things don’t end well when a sentence starts, ‘Let me tell you something about the negro.’”

- On how well Obamacare would have to work for Republicans to quit trying to repeal it: “What if your yearly checkup came with tickets to a Clippers game? Not the old Don Sterling Clippers, the new Oprah Clippers. Would that be good enough?”

- And, judged by audience response, his best effort of the night: “These days the House Republicans actually give John Boehner a harder time than they give me... which means that orange really is the new black.”
Click to expand...

Yep, I'll agree with the consensus...the last was the best.
Damn, that's to the point...

Aceventura · May 5, 2014

rogue49 said: ↑

Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008

Can we like him yet??
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The Federal Reserve likes him to the toon of about an expected $5 trillion dollars by the end of the year. The Fed is pumping money into the economy and artificially keeping interest rates low, subsidizing the US national debt and deficit. There is going to be a day of reckoning? I bet Obama will be long gone and it will be someoneelse's problem. What a guy!

Stay tuned. This is no longer just your kids’ futures and the financial future of your grandchildren at stake. At some point someone with enough clout somewhere is going to realize that $4 trillion (or $5 trillion in 2014 or 2015) is actually a serious pile of assets that cannot be dealt with in a rapid manner.
Click to expand...

Fed Balance Sheet Clearly Over $4 Trillion - 24/7 Wall St.

rogue49 · May 5, 2014

Aceventura said: ↑

Fed Balance Sheet Clearly Over $4 Trillion - 24/7 Wall St.
Click to expand...

Then you need to bitch out Congress because they're the ones that spent the money before.
Then bitch out the corporate structure, because they're the ones that needs their asses saved.

The prez can only spend what he has control of...including wars. (any president...including ones that do NOT put items on the balance sheet.)

I'm still waiting on Congress to stop spending where it isn't wanted. (ex. Army Tanks, Subsidies, etc)

AND There is a big difference between the budget deficit...and the debt.

Let's get our topics straight.

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