President Obama Approval Ratings and Leadership

I am not a President Obama partisan. I supported other candidates. I think the President has been a more or less average President. I have been severely disappointed on his foreign policy and civil liberties moves. I think that by instinct and training the President is too often cautious when he should be bold. That aside, given the nature of the United States political economy one would have been foolish to expect any President, let alone the first Black President to have been a fire breathing transformative figure of justice for race, gender, class or any other issue that is near and dear to the Left. That's just not how things work, despite what Cornel West says. It's not original to me and I can't remember where I read it but just recently I perused something that claimed (perhaps jokingly, perhaps not) that just as soon as any US President is inaugurated he is shown an unreleased tape of the events in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 and asked if he has any questions. I don't know about that but for whatever reason President Obama has been something of a disappointment to some notable progressive figures, most recently filmmaker Michael Moore. For some reason some white progressives always seem to be surprised and vaguely disappointed that not every black politician is Nat Turner Malcolm X the 3rd, a fire breathing reject from a 70s blaxploitation movie who's here to kick a$$ and stick it to the Man. I'm not entirely sure such a man would have been elected President. Nah, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been. But it's not just rotund Michiganians that the President has to worry about pleasing. His approval ratings for leadership have reached new lows just as he plans to address the nation this evening to discuss his strategy for dealing with the group ISIS.

Barack Obama’s rating for strong leadership has dropped to a new low in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, hammered by criticism of his work on international crises and a stalled domestic agenda alike. With the midterm elections looming, Americans by a 10-point margin, 52-42 percent, see his presidency more as a failure than a success.

Just 38 percent now approve of Obama’s handling of international affairs, down 8 percentage points since July to a career low; 56 percent disapprove, a majority for the first time. Fifty-two percent say he’s been too cautious in dealing with Islamic insurgents in Iraq and Syria. And the public is ahead of Obama in support for a military response to that crisis, with 65 percent in favor of extending U.S. air strikes to Syria.  

LINK

Now you can always find reasons to blame the guy in the Big Seat before you for leaving you a big old s*** sandwich to chow down on. Almost every President does that, especially if the previous President was a member of the opposite party. Heck, even if the previous President was a member of your party, would be Presidents often find it prudent to distance themselves policy wise, just ask Hillary Clinton. I think that the Iraq war pursued by President Bush and the entire Mid-East policy pursued by previous Presidents have been utter failures. ISIS would not exist as it does now had the US not invaded Iraq and unwittingly released and restoked ethnic and religious tensions across the region. Unlike what Cheney and other neocons claimed, invading Iraq did not lead to peaceful multiparty democracies in the Middle East. But that's not important now. President Obama is in charge. He will have to convince people that he knows what he's doing and that he has a coherent and applicable foreign policy strategy. Ironically, Congress, which has the constitutional power to declare war and end funding for war, has been in hiding on the issue, scared to say yea or nay. It is much safer to effectively vote "Present" and then blame the President if things turn out bad or say you were with him all along if things work out. That's a failing in our system.

Nevertheless whether it is "optics" as the President and his supporters dismissively term it or an actual "failure of leadership" as trained conservative critics bray on command, there does seem to me to be a certain hesitation, a certain reluctance, a willingness to "lead from behind" which can be somewhat offsetting to the American public. As pointed out in the ABC NEWS link though the saving grace for the President is that the Republicans in Congress and Congress in general are seen in an even worse light. Their constant "no" on everything and their embrace of racialized ugliness have left Republicans in a bad place, nationally. Also I think that people forget sometimes, in part because of the 24-7 news cycle and constant "scandal that fizzles out", that we do not live under a parliamentary system. Even if almost everyone thinks the President is the worst President ever and the Democrats get slaughtered in the midterms, absent impeachment and conviction, President Obama still has two years and change left in his term. He's not going anywhere.

Still, from a purely partisan perspective, it might help Democrats heck it might help the country, if the President could provide or be seen to provide some stronger leadership and clarity. I don't understand how he can claim he doesn't need congressional approval for war in Libya, turn around and say he probably does need it in Syria and now hint that he may not need it for Iraq and Syria. You have to give your supporters something to rally for, not just constantly say the other guys are worse. Although that may be true I'm not sure that gets people to the polls in November or helps your party keep the White House in 2016.

What do you think?

Do you think the President has provided strong leadership?

Do you have any serious disappointments with the President?

If you could talk to him what you like to him to say in his speech tonight? Will you watch his speech?

What policy changes would you ask him to make? What can he do to improve the public perception of his leadership?

President Obama and Foreign Policy: Et tu, Hillary?

I could never ever ever be a politician. There are just too many times that you must smile and eat a big bowl of crap while pretending that it tastes good. And if you're good at pulling off that trick you can expect that many more such bowls will be delivered to you. h/t The Wire. You must occasionally pretend to be all things to all people, be on all sides of any issue at once and come up smelling like roses even as you're wading knee deep in the sewage of backroom deals and donor stroking. One of the most important skills you must have as a politician could be to never take anything personally. It's just business, after all. Everyone is self-interested. Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are consummate politicians. And Mrs. Clinton is basically running an as yet so far formally undeclared campaign for the 2016 Presidential election. I think that with two years and change left in the Obama Administration it's a little early for her to be getting her name out there but she apparently operates on the principle of don't put off until tomorrow what you could be doing today. 

As a key member of the Obama Administration, former Senator, and Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, should she run, would be wise depending on the President's popularity around 2016, to keep her options open on whether her Administration would represent a break from the Obama Administration or a continuation of Obama policies. Recently, Mrs. Clinton sent a very deliberate message that at least as far as foreign policy is concerned, she would do things differently than President Obama.

This signal was sent loud and clear in a recent interview with centrist-right author and correspondent for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. You can read it here in its entirety. I urge you to do so. It's long but gives you a great idea of how much Mrs. Clinton had to bite her tongue during her stint in the Obama Administration or perhaps more accurately how much she might want possible voters to believe she had to bite her tongue. Although she talks about how smart the President is, she unhesitatingly called out his foreign affairs principle by name saying:

• Great nations need organizing principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organizing principle. It may be a necessary brake on the actions you might take in order to promote a vision.  
• "You know, when you’re down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward.” 

Clinton openly identified with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's refusal to countenance an independent Palestinian state saying that:

• If I were the prime minister of Israel, you’re damn right I would expect to have control over security, because even if I’m dealing with [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas, who is 79 years old, and other members of Fatah, who are enjoying a better lifestyle and making money on all kinds of things, that does not protect Israel from the influx of Hamas or cross-border attacks from anywhere else. With Syria and Iraq, it is all one big threat. So Netanyahu could not do this in good conscience. 

She also hinted that ISIS might not have become the problem that it is now had the US armed Syrian rebels. In short Clinton as President would tack a bit more to the right than President Obama has. It's not fair to uncritically proclaim, as some have stated, that she sees him as a wimp, but it is fair to infer that she would have a more aggressive foreign policy and would not be as cautious about the use of military power. It's amusing to read what Mrs. Clinton had to say about President Obama considering he has stretched executive authority on drone use far beyond what the second President Bush thought prudent, attacked Libya, and is currently at the time limit for the War Powers Act regarding intervention in Iraq, but life is strange. Obama loyalist David Axelrod not so subtly tweaked Mrs. Clinton for her "stupid" vote for the Iraq war, a signal that President Obama and his inner circle might be more than a bit peeved about Mrs. Clinton's interview.

Now it's not unusual for politicians to work with or even include on their team people they don't like. JFK wasn't very fond of LBJ. Eisenhower was coolly contemptuous of Nixon. Nobody liked Hoover. So it goes. And it only makes sense that Clinton would hint that she would chart her own path should she become President.way. Still, given the nastiness shown between Obama and Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, I was a little surprised that the President welcomed her into his Administration in the first place, let alone gave her such a high profile position as Secretary of State. If I were the President I wouldn't have hired her. And if advisers claimed I had to do so I would have given her a relatively low profile unattractive position and then micromanaged the hell out of her, all the while leaking to the press how disappointed "high ranking officials" were with her work so far. But that's just me. I would not have wished to help her burnish her resume.

It is a delicate balance to seek to succeed someone for whom you worked. Show that you're your own (wo)man but at the same time show that you're going to provide continuity for successful policies. The issue with Clinton's criticism is not that she made it. The issue is that it hearkens back to charges she made before and which Republicans make today, that the President is in over his head and substitutes sloganeering for action. It's not necessarily a fair critique but I wonder if the President, who has been accused of being rabbit eared about criticism, is at at least in part reacting to such feedback by intervening in Iraq without Congressional authority when just a few months earlier he claimed that he needed such authority to intervene in Syria. If Obama's approval ratings were higher I doubt Clinton would be running her mouth. But as they say about politics, if you want a friend, get a dog. 

So what do you think?

Are Clinton's criticisms just par for the course and no big deal?

Is Clinton disloyal?

Is she putting her name out there too early?

Is President Obama a lame duck?

Good morning. Unfortunately this is another day when it looks like the overseer at my salt mine employment wants to know in exact detail how much salt I've mined over the past month, where are the records and why didn't I mine more salt. So as a result this will be a short post but it is something that has been on my mind lately. Is President Obama a lame duck? Usually, lame duck status only accrues to a President in the final two years or less remaining of his term, after the November midterms, when his party has usually lost seats in the House or Senate or even if they haven't done so are looking forward, often for reasons of self-preservation, to the next political cycle, which by definition won't include the current President. Much like the lag period between a corporate boss announcing that they're retiring and the time at which they actually do so, people who used to toady to the boss or at least grudgingly offer respect to the position, may suddenly discover heretofore unknown independence of thought and action. The boss' requests may be ignored or slow-walked. If the boss was never much liked in the first place, open insubordination is not out of the realm of possibility. This is particularly true when the boss was not well plugged into the power structures of the company. Other power brokers can even subtly or not so subtly encourage such behavior, especially if your workplace is a real dog-eat-dog kind of environment. I've heard that Washington D.C. is such a place where the weak are killed and eaten, politically speaking.

Now as far as some more right-wing citizens were concerned of course the President lacked legitimacy in the first place so they saw him as a lame duck from the start despite being elected twice by comfortable margins. But some recent events and data should give the President and his supporters, if not fits, cause for serious concern.

President Obama hit a new low in support, according to an NBC/WSJ poll. President Obama’s job approval rating sank to a new low of 41 percent in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday, forecasting political headwinds for the Democratic Party in the months leading up to November’s midterm elections.

Forty-eight percent of respondents in the survey said that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is a solid supporter of of Obama, versus 26 percent who said they are more likely to support a candidate that supports the president. More than a third of respondents remained neutral, with 41 percent saying that their vote will have nothing to do with the president.

LINK

Now from a purely selfish standpoint this may not matter too much to the President. We don't have a parliamentary system with votes of confidence or party leaders being removed by their party. Short of impeachment and conviction President Obama will serve out his term. But this matters a great deal to Senate and House Democrats, who are starting to see less of a downside to opposing the President. This was made clear in the successful (and shameful) disposal of the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the similar ominous storm clouds gathering around the nomination of Vivek Murthy to be the Surgeon General. Now regardless of whether you think that either man would have been good at his job the point remains that it is Senate Democrats who either wavered or led the charge against both men. Those aren't the actions of people who think that President Obama is popular or that they need to worry about opposing the President. There is no price to pay for opposing President Obama. He talks tough but seems to be at a loss how to deal with determined opposition. Again, it is a little early to be having these sorts of problems with your own party. Part of this may be coming from a long held belief among some Democrats that President Obama has short coattails and so they have to look out for themselves, politically speaking. 

WASHINGTON — Democrats are becoming increasingly alarmed about their midterm election fortunes amid President Obama’s sinking approval ratings, a loss in a special House election in Florida last week, and millions of dollars spent by Republican-aligned groups attacking the new health law. The combination has led to uncharacteristic criticism of Mr. Obama and bitter complaints that his vaunted political organization has done little to help the party’s vulnerable congressional candidates. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress, state party officials and strategists revealed a new urgency about the need to address the party’s prospects. One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming “poisonous” to the party’s candidates. 

At the same time, Democrats are pressing senior aides to Mr. Obama for help from the political network. When two senior White House officials — Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director, and Phil Schiliro, the health care adviser — went to the Capitol late last month to address Senate Democrats about the Affordable Care Act, they were met with angry questions about why Mr. Obama’s well-funded advocacy group, Organizing for Action, was not airing commercials offering them cover on the health law....

Surprise, surprise the PPACA has been driving some of the Democratic problems. Well I can't see the future but you may remember that I predicted that it would not work as designed, which is apparently why the President has been making so many changes to it. Time will tell if I'm wrong or not but if it was such a great plan there wouldn't have to be so many unilateral changes to it. Similar past changes to the REAL ID act and some deep discussions with our very own The Janitor have grudgingly convinced me that the President is probably still within his legal rights though he may be pushing up against the extreme limits. Different topic, different day. But anyway I don't think that pro-PPACA voters will be a serious factor in the midterm elections. Democrats know this which is why they are about two minutes away from hitting the abandon ship button. Still, as we've seen in the past, oftentimes the evil overlord plans don't work out. President Obama wasn't supposed to win in 2008 or 2012. But he did. Every time his rivals cackle that they've got him now he seems to thrive and win. So Democratic panic may be real but it also may be overstated. I can't call it. Well I could but I'd rather know what you think.

Is President Obama a premature lame duck?

Are some Democrats correct to distance themselves from the President?

Do you think Republicans can retake the Senate?

How can the President keep Senate Democrats moving in his direction?

Racism and Ted Nugent: Then and Now

Asa Carter Then:




Ted Nugent Now:

Any Questions?
The enemy is the same as it's always been. I'd like to know where are the Republicans who constantly bleat that the base of their party is not in large part animated by racism. Where are the politicians and media types who hounded President Obama to denounce, disassociate, and differentiate himself from people like Jesse Jackson, Reverend Wright, Cornell West, or any other bête noire of the day? Where are Nugent's high profile friends or media enablers like Mitch Albom or Nick Cannon? Will they denounce such language?
Probably not. I'd like to think that people would reject and shame white right-wingers who say things like this but it very rarely seems to work that way. We'll see.
At the time of this writing the only high profile Republican political operative to openly criticize Nugent's hateful speech is Senator Rand Paul. So far no one else has the stones. Either that or as is more likely they agree with him regarding President Barack Obama. Just as Klansman Asa Carter ultimately lost the fight to keep segregation and ban rock-n-roll, the Republican party is doomed to keep losing national elections unless they separate themselves from the extreme right-wing fringe. There just aren't enough angry white men with fecal matter for brains to keep voting Republican. Nationwide, that is. Texas is apparently a different story.

Corporate Welfare or Good Business Sense???

I'll take any mother*****'s money if he giving it away!!!!
-Clay Davis
Regardless of race, gender, political affiliation or geography, when you say "welfare", many people probably still think of a person who looks and sounds like this. Such a wretched individual makes an easy target for people who are tired of other people putting hands in their pocket while having the nerve, the audacity to claim that they are somehow entitled to do so.

However it has never ceased to amaze me that the more you need money the less likely people are to give it to you while the less you need it, the more people break their neck trying to give it to you. I was reminded of that by two separate recent events, one national and one local. If we take our focus off "welfare" as money given to "underclass" mothers and/or other loud obese moochers and expand the term to include well off people, we might be surprised by how much government assistance the rich get, even for doing things they would already do. There have been books written on this. This is a tremendously inefficient use of government resources. And it's unfair. I don't mind paying taxes if those taxes can prevent someone from starving to death or being homeless. I do mind paying taxes when those taxes are given to individuals or companies that are not so troubled.

Michigan billionaires, Mike and Marian Illitch (net worth around $3 billion), owners of Little Caesars, The Detroit Tigers, The Detroit Red Wings, various land development companies and Motor City Casino (under Marian's name for business reasons) have decided that they want a new arena for the Red Wings. The current one, Joe Louis Arena is not quite decrepit but is definitely outdated.

Well in a so-called free market when you want to take a risk and build/buy something new you pony up the dollars and either get the rewards or take the losses. But that's not how things work for billionaires, especially in sports. Despite the fact that tons of evidence exists that public financing of sports arenas rarely brings the ROI that supporters claim it does, the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan have come together to ensure that the Illitches get public land for essentially nothing in order to build their new stadium/entertainment complex. That's how things work, not just in Detroit, but in many cities. The subsidy is bad enough but what made this deal stand out to me was that the Illitches, or rather their company, will keep ALL revenues from the stadium. There will be no sharing with either the state or the city. Additionally Olympia Entertainment will pay no property taxes on the new stadium. Even the building of the stadium itself will be 60% publicly funded. Now does that sound like a win-win deal for the city? 

In one of the largest land transfers in the city’s history, the Detroit City Council agreed Tuesday to hand over 39 parcels of land along the Cass Corridor to transform what was once a blighted, crime-ridden strip near downtown Detroit into a $650-million entertainment venue that will include a new arena for the Detroit Red Wings. The vote authorizes the city to sell the public land for $1 to the Detroit Downtown Development Authority, which will own the arena and lease it for up to 95 years to Olympia Development of Michigan. The company is owned by the Ilitch family, which owns the Red Wings. The essentially free transfer of public land — with an assessed value of about $2.9 million — is the city’s chief contribution to the development.

As proposed, construction of the arena itself would be 58% publicly funded and 42% privately funded. No Detroit general fund dollars would be spent; the state is contributing the bulk of the public investment. Olympia has agreed to pay $11.5 million annually for about 30 years to help pay off the construction bonds. Olympia will own the arena’s naming rights and will keep all revenues from arena operations, including parking fees and concessions sales. The city will not collect property taxes on the arena.

The second instance of corporate welfare which caught my ire was the agreement over the latest farm bill, which President Obama is going to sign into law today, likely at Michigan State University, that center of agricultural higher learning better known as Moo U. I hear that the President will also be treated to a demonstration of the correct techniques of cow artificial insemination and 101 uses of cowpies. But I digress. The bill, soon to become law, has all sorts of goodies included into it, most of which are going to insurers and agribusiness, not "farmers". Think less Tom Joad and more Monsanto.

The bill stinks. And given that it also cuts food stamps can Democratic partisans stop talking about how the evil Republicans are behind this. If the food stamp cuts really bothered the President he would veto the bill. He's not doing that. Take from that what you will. I learn from people's actions, not their words.

WASHINGTON — No one was happier than Danny Murphy, a Mississippi soybean farmer with 1,500 acres, when the Senate on Tuesday passed a farm bill that expanded crop insurance and other benefits for agribusiness. “It’s a relief,” Mr. Murphy said. Few were as unhappy as Sheena Wright, the president of the United Way in New York, who expects to see a surge of hungry people seeking help because the bill cuts $8 billion in food stamps over a decade. “You are going to have to make a decision on what you are going to do, buy food or pay rent,” Ms. Wright said.

The nearly 1,000-page bill, which President Obama is to sign at Michigan State University on Friday, among other things expanded crop insurance for farmers by $7 billion over a decade and created new subsidies for rice and peanut growers that would kick in when prices drop. But anti-hunger advocates said the bill would harm 850,000 American households, about 1.7 million people spread across 15 states, which would lose an average of $90 per month in benefits because of the cuts in the food stamp program.

Unlike the food stamp program, the federally subsidized crop insurance program was not cut. The program, which is administered by 18 companies that are paid $1.4 billion annually by the government to sell policies to farmers, pays 62 percent of farmers’ premiums.

LINK

So the rich will get richer and piggish private interests will continue to feed from the government trough, only pausing long enough to wipe the crumbs from their snout and mumble "free market" or "individual responsibility" to the rest of us, before continuing their gluttony. Such is life I guess. I would like to know though where is the conservative outrage over such transfers of public monies to private hands? Why are some conservatives silent about this when businesses are the recipients? And flipping the script would liberals be quiet if it were a President Bush cutting food stamps in the economic environment we have now? Somehow I doubt it. But look over there! Chris Christie!!! Benghazi!! Birth Control Pills!!!!!!

Why ObamaCare Won't Work As Designed

The PPACA (ObamaCare) launch, has been an unmitigated disaster. The infamous Healthcare.gov website does not currently work anything close to specifications. Anyone who initially worked on its design, coding, management, testing or quality assurance should be embarrassed to list that on their resume. Some places will fire you because your boss didn't like your looks. In other organizations you literally have to fall asleep at your desk frequently before management reluctantly asks you to leave. Time will tell which model the President prefers but right now it looks closer to the second than the first. The President's claim that he was out of the loop on website issues stretches credulity. Now we find out that he was indeed briefed on problems. Whatever. I believe that eventually the website will work well enough for most to obtain insurance and/or subsidies. By eventually I mean I don't know when. An administration official recently admitted that 30-40% of the backend development that supports the malfunctioning website has also not been completed, including the sections which handle the accounting and delivery of payments and subsidies. The government and contractors haven't coded or tested that functionality yet. The hits just keep coming. I already knew that there are some incompetent people in government and IT consulting firms. What I only suspected before but has increasingly become obvious is that ObamaCare will not work as designed. Let me tell you why.

Because people across the political spectrum tend to jettison critical thinking and become blindly partisan on this issue, let me say upfront that though I oppose the individual mandate, I want every American citizen who needs health care to be able to get it. The pre-ObamaCare insurance and health care system didn't work well for many people. I have no problem paying higher income taxes to cover the uninsured. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Tea Party. I do feel a certain sadness and frustration that a law which funnels millions of people into the caring arms of insurance companies and even has provisions for insurance company bailouts has in a weird world become the liberal call to the barricades. This attack dog mentality by some progressives towards anyone that would question ObamaCare confuses me, especially when President Obama is telling CEO's that he doesn't see a lot of policy differences between Republicans and Democrats and that their battles are mostly around rhetoric. His words, not mine, folks. ObamaCare "fixes" the issue for a minority by making things worse for everyone else. It does this because the law's authors placed an extremely high premium on "equality" while placing a low value on "freedom". The law also hides command and control values in free market drag. 

Let's examine this.
Insurance is based on expected value. All insurance works this way, whether it's auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance, or health insurance. Both you and the insurance provider are making bets about the possibility of uncertain future events and/or catastrophes. If you "win" the bet and something bad happens well then you get a payout. If the provider "wins" the bet and nothing happens then they keep the premiums you've paid. Obviously the provider has an incentive to define a payable event in the most limited way possible while the purchaser's interests lie in the opposite direction. There is room for government regulation around this. No insurer wants to pay out more than they have to. And no one who thought they had medical insurance wants to stagger into the hospital only to discover that the fine print in their policy excludes payouts on any day ending in "y".

If you believe I like working hard every day/Just step on my shoes and take my pay 
-"Just Got Paid" ZZ Top

But ObamaCare changes health insurance into something closer to a social insurance/entitlement program. It forces health care plans to offer items that not everyone wants or needs. It limits the insurer's ability to price actuarially based on 

• gender: women use more health care than men and live longer than men do 
• age: as we get older we get sicker and use more health care
• pre-existing conditions: someone who already has medical issues will use more health care than someone who doesn't 

The law's architects consider this "fair". Some claim that anyone who disagrees supports "discrimination". These requirements mean that not only will costs rise for most people but that also that there will be cost shifting. Younger people, men, and healthy people of both genders will on average be paying more for insurance than they were before ObamaCare. There's no such thing as a free lunch. That's worth repeating. If you require insurers to cover more conditions and more people the additional cost will need to be paid by someone.
Those required to pay more for insurance may not think this is good, especially when they were repeatedly told that they could keep their health plan and doctor. From either political reasons or hubris, President Obama and the law's designers were silent about additional costs. The mass policy cancellations and the sticker shock of higher premiums and deductibles for new ObamaCare compliant policies finally made the law real to many Americans. They didn't like what they saw. And they said so.

See the blind man on the street /Looking for something free
See the kind man ask his friends/Hey, what's in it for me?
-"Dog eat Dog" AC/DC

This is when the friendly face of ObamaCare morphs into something a little nastier. People opposed to paying hundreds extra per month for coverage they'll never use are derided by the law's supporters as Fox news watchers or drooling morons who can't comprehend their great deal. Suddenly all their previous plans are "substandard" or they're just selfish greedy people. Right. ObamaCare's fatal flaw is that it requires people to make economic decisions which are not in their best interest. People generally act in their own interest. And if I am a single man, or a woman who doesn't want, already had or can't have children, the purchase of maternity and pediatric coverage makes no sense for me. If I abstain from drink and drugs I don't need a policy which includes substance abuse coverage. And if I am a natural foods/alternative medicine enthusiast I will probably not be thrilled about paying for policies with prescription drug coverage. The government can tax these people and give their money to other folks. That would be honest. But telling people to enter a marketplace and purchase coverage they don't need so that other people can pay less is an economically illiterate idea. So far the numbers bear this out. New Medicaid enrollment is far outstripping private enrollment. If I couldn't afford or didn't want insurance before PPACA why would I buy a more expensive policy after the launch?  The President has also been stretching the concept of separation of powers as he and executive branch shot callers constantly delay enforcement of or provide waivers from this or that element of ObamaCare as another bad outcome becomes visible. I'm wondering if the President will postpone some ObamaCare requirements until 2020. Seriously. The law isn't supposed to be based on Presidential caprice. Congress needs to fix or delay the law. The President's forced and grudging declaration that people can really keep their, in his view, "substandard" cancelled policies for another year, provided the insurance companies and state commissioners agree, was a nakedly political move, which could cause exchange premiums to skyrocket even further. The policy cancellations are a feature of ObamaCare, not a bug.

If ObamaCare were a good deal then insurance companies could offer PPACA compliant policies alongside their previous policies without any government arm twisting to eliminate the older policies. Consumers could make their own choices. But that can't happen because not enough people would purchase the new policies. That tells me everything I need to know about the PPACA. Sooner, rather than later, it will implode from its internal contradictions. We needed to prevent the most outrageous insurance company abuses, expand Medicaid, raise taxes to create subsidized risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions. Instead we have the PPACA. The fact that many Republicans are rabid, racist and insane doesn't change the fact that the PPACA isn't working now and won't work as designed. And that's on the Democrats.

Money It's a crime/Share it fairly 
But don't take a slice of my pie
-"Money" Pink Floyd

President Obama and ObamaCare Change

Well what do you think?
  

President Barack Obama said the Obamacare rollout has been "rough so far" and he has been deeply concerned about it.

Under a fix offered by Obama on Thursday to address a controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act, the President said Americans who received cancellation notices may be able to keep their individual insurance plans for one more year.

The deal is meant to cover millions of people who have had their insurance policies canceled because the policies do not meet Obamacare requirements. The uproar has ensnared the White House for weeks, shining a spotlight on Obama's earlier promise that people who liked their insurance plans could keep them.

But the fix, as reported earlier by CNN's Dana Bash, puts the onus of the renewals on insurers. The administration is not requiring insurers or state insurance commissioners to extend the existing plans, but instead is allowing insurers to offer an additional year of coverage.

Also, insurers must notify policyholders of the difference in benefits between their policies and the Obamacare plans available on the insurance exchanges. And the companies must inform people that additional policies are available on the exchanges and that subsidies may be available to those who qualify.

This fix will not solve "every problem for every person," Obama said.

President Obama and ObamaCare Statements

The problem with simple definitive statements is that if you make them, e.g. "Read my lips, no new taxes" or "We were not trading arms for hostages, nor were we negotiating with terrorists" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" they need to be true. They don't need to have legal disclaimers added on at the end written in very small print or read aloud in a hurried cadence and low volume voice. And when it comes out that not only were the statements you made untrue but that also you may have had reason to know they were untrue but that you or your advisers decided that the greater good required you to continue making them, well maybe that's just good old fashioned politics. Politicians don't necessarily get elected by telling people things that people don't want to hear. Remember President Perot? Indeed. But for someone whose brand is that he's not like all the other snake oil salesmen politicians, definitive confident assurances that "If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan. Period." are risky things to say right before hundreds of thousands to millions of cancellation notices are sent out.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe my eyes and ears deceive me. Perhaps the President was, as he recently implied, merely misunderstood by people who heard him speak on the PPACA. I know sometimes that people in my circles of work associates, family or friends didn't hear what I said or claim I said something different. So I can certainly sympathize with the President if that's what happened to him.

Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really like that plan, what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed,” he said. “We wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard, they’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan that they’re selling.”

Check out this video. I'm no policy wonk nor am I any sort of legal mind. But a slow Midwestern rube like me can certainly see how someone might have gotten the false idea that they could keep their health care plan if they liked it. Period. I wonder where they got that false idea from. Maybe it was John Boehner?? Hmm. Good for us that the President was here to straighten us out. After the fact of course. But better late than never I always say....

Does the President Need A Different Style?

Recently with the self-imposed confusion over policy in Syria, new threats over government shutdown, the debt ceiling, gun control defeat, the sequester, the liberal revolt over Larry Summer's possible appointment as Fed Chairman, and a few other so-called controversies there were quite a few articles and columns questioning, mocking or outright attacking President Obama's personality and leadership style. Some were questioning his manly vigor. These ranged from the snarky and mean to the more level headed and analytical:

Maureen Dowd

With a shrinking circle of trust inside the White House, Obama is having trouble establishing trust outside with once reliable factions: grass-roots Democrats and liberals in Congress. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times, the president is finding himself increasingly “frustrated” by the defiance of Democrats who are despairing of his passive, reactive leadership. 

Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana on the banking committee, told Jonathan Martin for Politico in February, after he scraped through to a second term, that the president was not engaged with the Hill, that he had not met with Obama at the White House since 2010, and that he was sorely missing aides like Rahm Emanuel, who tirelessly worked and stroked Democrats in Congress. Tester was one of three Democrats who spurned the president on his favorite to run the Federal Reserve, Larry Summers. The White House didn’t call Tester until Friday, when it was too late; Summers was allowed to twist in the wind, like Susan Rice before him. Top Democrats who used to consider Obama one cool cat now muse that he’s “one weird cat,” as one big shot put it.

NYT

In recent weeks, disgruntled Democrats, particularly liberals, have bolted from the White House on issues like National Security Agency surveillance policies, a planned military strike on Syria and the potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to lead the Federal Reserve. In private, they often sound exasperated describing Mr. Obama’s operation; in public, they are sometimes only a little more restrained. 

They complain the White House has not consulted enough and failed to assert leadership. They say Mr. Obama has been too passive and ceded momentum to Republicans. 

“If you read the papers, you almost think the Republicans are in control,” said Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and vigorously opposed Mr. Summers until he withdrew from consideration. “They’re constantly on the offensive. Democrats are on the defensive. ”The lack of strong leadership, he added, has created a vacuum. “I think you’re going to see more independents saying, ‘Mr. President, we look forward to working with you, but we’re not simply going to accept your leadership and your ideas,’ ” he said. “ ‘We’re not going to follow you. You’re going to have to work with us.’ ”

Washington Post

Style points? Seriously? Style points? That’s what President Obama thinks the criticism of his zigzag Syria policy amounts to? As presidential spin, this is insulting. As presidential conviction — if this is what he really believes — it’s scary. Presidential actions have ripples beyond ripples. Obama may have lucked — or his secretary of state accidentally may have stumbled — into an approach that averted “The Perils of Pauline” moment. But the indecision, the mind-changing, the lurching — and, note, Obama did not dispute such characterizations so much as dismiss them — have consequences. 

“Style,” as the president would have it, matters. Adversaries and allies, foreign and domestic, take a measure of the president’s steel. They judge whether he can be trusted, whether he will back down, whether he has what it takes to lead his country and the world. In the past few weeks, I have encountered not a single person outside the White House, Republican or Democrat, who has kind words for Obama’s performance. 

The President is an introvert. Although politics is often thought to be a more welcoming realm for extroverts there have been enough introverted Presidents or other political leaders to call that assumption into question. But as someone who is decidedly introverted himself and thus somewhat sympathetic to the President on this issue, I think the issue of introversion vs. extroversion misses the point. All introversion means is that you recharge and relax by being alone or around a small circle of close friends and by thinking, reading or writing rather than talking. Extroversion is the opposite in that you prefer to be around people and engaged with them. You like to talk and interact with people. You gain energy and comfort by doing that. These different personality traits might be stereotypically associated with leader/follower roles but they don't have to be. There are extroverted type A personalities who make truly horrible leaders and introverted analytical close-mouthed people who nonetheless manage to shine and rise quickly to prominence once they're in the Big Seat.

The President's perception issues stem from the fact that he can argue against himself in his speeches, can back down in the face of opposition, evidently feels that the glad-handing and personal touches that are important to build relationships are beneath him, and hasn't given a consistently strong indication of what he thinks his second term goals are. This has emboldened his opposition while confusing or disheartening his supporters. It's far far too early to consider him a lame duck but perception can become reality if he's not careful. The same rationality which allows him to see and understand multiple sides of an argument can be a liability if he can't fight for his side of the argument and explain himself in broad, simple strokes. Otherwise the President leaves himself open to interpretation by friends or foes who have their own interests to pursue. 

The President, like just about every other Black man working in America, has most certainly had to watch his step and restrain his emotions lest he be seen as an "angry black man" and lose public support. There's no doubt about that. The fact that someone as milquetoast and mainstream and pro-business as President Obama is seen by a sizable minority as an anti-American, anti-white, militant, Muslim, foreign, revolutionary and treasonous Nat Turner/Malcolm X Mandingo thug from Chicago shows you that this is hardly a post-racial society. However people rightly or wrongly often respond to strength. I think the President too often fails to convey that emotion. And I think that's what animates much of the criticism in the linked articles. Note that this criticism is coming from people who for the most part are broadly supportive of the President's stated policy goals. It's not coming from Tea Party folks. Some criticized the President's previous lack of executive experience. That was a fair criticism even if it was often mouthed by people who were anything but fair when it came to the President. After having been President for four years and seeing the opposition that he faces, one would think that he would have realized that, even if he thinks it's silly, he will have to do some things differently. 

Most Republicans, especially in the House, are simply beyond his ability to reach. The vitriol and irrationality are too deep. But when Democrats are complaining publicly of a White House that ignores them and doesn't return phone calls, when labor Unions are deriding Obamacare, there's a leadership problem. Whether it's rooted in personality, principled contempt for politics, or simple uncertainty on how to proceed, he needs to fix it. The President's greatest advantage is that his Republican opposition is incompetent and mostly incoherent. They can't agree on anything other than hating Obama. That's not enough to win on as they found out in 2012 and 2008. But if President Obama wants to push forward, he needs to change perceptions. My perception is that he can be reactive. 

Questions
1) Do you think President Obama is a firm, decisive leader?

2) Do you think this criticism of his leadership style is unfair?

3) What traits are important to lead others?

President Obama's Kill List: Murder Incorporated Drones

Obama kills children. I meant to write on this last week but due to work requirements I had to table it. Let's get back to some serious questions. You may not have noticed it what with all the media's fawning over the President at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the President's oh so brave announcement that he supports gay marriage that made some people fall out in Messianic ecstasy or the sudden Democratic "discovery" and "shocked outrage" (just in time for the November election) that the US income and wealth distributions have continued to ever more sharply tilt toward the well off but the undeclared war of worldwide drone attacks that the President has sanctioned and directed has continued. It's worse than I thought and probably worse than any of us know. 


No, while Democratic partisans were girding themselves for holy war over the pressing issue of forcing the Catholic Church to underwrite birth control for middle class women, hunting out homophobic heresies among comedians and preachers or stating with a straight face that a federal mandate to give money to huge corporate insurers without price controls was actually a progressive position, the Obama Administration was taking the so-called war on terror (a term it avoids because Bush used it) to a level of lawlessness and violence undreamed of by President Bush. The most striking aspect of Obama's first term has been not the ugliness with which some low-information racist voters oppose him, but the extent to which Obama's policies around war and civil liberties have been a continuation, well really a degradation, of Bush programs. 


That's right. There may be some mild debate among the elites on homosexual marriage or abortion but when it comes to killing or spying on people without warrant, judicial or congressional oversight, this Administration fits perfectly with the previous one. You can vote for a Republican and get war or vote for a Democrat and get war. Yummy. What great choices we have in our duopolistic plutocracy.
The New York Times, which is generally supportive of President Obama, recently did an expose of the Murder Incorporated campaign which the President is personally overseeing in contravention of law and morality. It is quite lengthy but I strongly urge you to take some time, okay a lot of time, and read it here.

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program. This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants. But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.

I am the law!

Did you get that? Everybody who looks like a terrorist is a terrorist so there haven't been many civilians killed because we only kill terrorists. The President said so. So it must be true. This is hogwash!!! The fact that a Black man is saying it doesn't change that fact. It shows how ridiculously premature and insane it was to give Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. But hey I'm sure that the families of those killed from afar by our brave philosopher warrior-king will take solace in knowing that their loved ones were either terrorists or up to no good. And it's not like the Third World is running out of people so what's the big deal, right? Every male we kill is a terrorist until someone can POSTHUMOUSLY prove otherwise. Hmm. Isn't that the EXACT same mentality of the NYPD supersized steroid gobbling thug who rousts, harasses or kills black men? You're black so you must be up to something. And even if you weren't doing anything wrong this time well let this arrest/insult/beatdown be an example to those who were. This is the mindset that is processing the Global War on Terror, uh excuse me Overseas Contingency Operation. 

But some State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official.  Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued. Now, in the wake of the bad first strike in Yemen, Mr. Obama overruled military and intelligence commanders who were pushing to use signature strikes there as well. “We are not going to war with Yemen,” he admonished in one meeting, according to participants. His guidance was formalized in a memo by General Jones, who called it a “governor, if you will, on the throttle,” intended to remind everyone that “one should not assume that it’s just O.K. to do these things because we spot a bad guy somewhere in the world.”Mr. Obama had drawn a line.  But within two years, he stepped across it. Signature strikes in Pakistan were killing a large number of terrorist suspects, even when C.I.A. analysts were not certain beforehand of their presence.  And in Yemen, roiled by the Arab Spring unrest, the Qaeda affiliate was seizing territory. Today, the Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. Officials say the criteria are tighter than those for signature strikes, requiring evidence of a threat to the United States, and they have even given them a new name — TADS, for Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes. But the details are a closely guarded secret — part of a pattern for a president who came into office promising transparency.

Future Terrorist Stopped!!!

Whoa Nelly... The Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. This is amazing. So we don't even need to know your name, what your alleged crime was or who you are. All we need is that some soft bureaucrat or politician without the stones to put his own life on the line gives an order, no doubt while munching on arugula salad or sipping decaf latte, and halfway around the world another human being is blown to bits. What a country we live in. How wonderful it is that a President's courage can be written down in the blood of other people's children. Historians will doubtless write admiring biographies detailing President's Obama's steadfast grim determination to stay the course in the face of absolutely no serious political opposition on this issue.


But hey he's a good guy because he's trying to get people to drive Volts and help women in their struggle for "reproductive justice". Perhaps this is just what President Obama had in mind when he said that after he was elected that this would be the moment when the planet began to heal. I think his idea of healing the planet and mine are somewhat different but what do I know. Maybe you really can bring peace to the world by dropping bombs on brown and black people you don't like. I had a much longer diatribe planned but this is long enough already. If you really think these actions are just fine there's not much I can write to convince you otherwise. I'll just make a few final points and stop since work beckons. 

• Drone attacks on countries with whom we have not declared war are a particularly odious and dare I say cowardly way of conducting foreign policy. The Constitution lays out a clear road map to declaring war. I don't care what other Presidents did in the past. You either do the right thing or you do not. 
• The US is setting a very very bad precedent here. Does the US think it's the only country with grudges to settle with so-called terrorists? Do you know the name Luis Posada Carriles? If you don't then you should. He is a terrorist with a very long history of violence against Cuban and Venezuelan people, including an airliner bombing. But as far as the US military and intelligence community is concerned, he was killing the right people so he is a popular fixture among the insane right-wing Miami Cuban-American community. Cuba and Venezuela would very much like to get their hands on him but the US has refused. Now what do you think would be the US response, what would be your response, if one or both of those countries started a series of drone attacks across south Florida, killing dozens or even hundreds of people until they got Carriles? And when the US protested, Cuba responded "Hey well, people knew who this guy was. The way we see it, anybody hanging around him was a terrorist so we won't lose sleep or apologize over what we did. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs so quit your crying."
• The US is making more enemies than it is killing with these drone attacks. Again, what would you do if someone starting shooting at your relative's wedding because they had information that your second cousin twice removed was there. And he was a bad guy. But let's say your cousin wasn't there and scores of your relatives and friends and their children were wounded and killed. Chances are you wouldn't be in a joyous mood. In fact you might be so angry and desperate that you and some other like minded people would get together to plan a little payback. It might take a while. It might happen two decades later and then just like with 9-11 naive and historically illiterate Americans would wonder why "they" hate us. It's already starting to happen. 
• It is of course I'm sure a mere coincidence that one of Obama's earliest big money contributors just happens to be the billionaire Lester Crown, a previous chairman of and primary stockholder in General Dynamics, which wouldn't you know, makes drones. How lucky Crown is then, that the politician he supported has increased demand for his company's product. 

The NYT story is only concerned with process and how this might play politically. The NYT is not that concerned with the number of children killed. If Bush or Cheney had been overseeing this program I suspect there might have been a different tone to the article. The ugly truth about this though is that the Times story not withstanding this system of extra-judicial murder and unsanctioned war is something that is deeply bi-partisan. Neither major party presidential candidate would stop this program. In my view, neither man is worthy of being President or has much use for either the Constitution or basic morality. Many people who got on their high horse and attacked President Bush over Guantanamo, torture, assassinations or cherry picked intelligence are quiet as church mice now that it's their guy sitting in the big seat. There are a few brave consistent souls, Ralph Nader for one or Jeremy Scahill, who have the integrity not to change their beliefs about murder, based on which party the President claims. Good for them. There's something rotten in America's soul when these actions pass without comment. Should we get a President Romney I don't want to hear a mumbling word from some snide slug of a delinquent Democrat who has, post-election, miraculously rediscovered his or her dedication to constitutional limitations on Presidential actions. Not. One. Word.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'" -Abraham Lincoln

What's your take?