Welcome to the World of the two-time Pulitzer Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez
Obama's Monument 01-20-17
POSTED ON JANUARY 18, 2017 BY JOHN HINDERAKER POWERLINE
OBAMA EXITS STAGE LEFT, WITH A LIE AND A THREAT
When Barack Obama speaks, especially without a teleprompter, you can almost see the zzzzzzs rising over the heads of his audience. You can only listen to platitudes for so long. But then, suddenly, Obama will come out with a falsehood so other-worldly that you sit up and say, “WTF was that?”
This was one such moment in today’s press conference:
OBAMA EXITS STAGE LEFT, WITH A LIE AND A THREAT
When Barack Obama speaks, especially without a teleprompter, you can almost see the zzzzzzs rising over the heads of his audience. You can only listen to platitudes for so long. But then, suddenly, Obama will come out with a falsehood so other-worldly that you sit up and say, “WTF was that?”
This was one such moment in today’s press conference:
|
OBAMA: We are the only country in the advanced world that makes it harder to vote rather than easier. And that dates back. There’s an ugly history to that that we should not be shy about talking about.
QUESTION: Voting rights? OBAMA: Yes, I’m talking about voting rights. The reason that we are the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote is — it traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery and it became sort of acceptable to restrict the franchise. And that’s not who we are. That shouldn’t be who we are. That’s not when America works best. So I hope that people pay a lot of attention to making sure that everybody has a chance to vote. Make it easier, not harder. This whole notion of election — voting fraud, this is something that has constantly been disproved, this — this is fake news. The notion that there are a whole bunch of people out there who are going out there and are not eligible to vote and want to vote. |
more below~
  |
  |
“Making it harder to vote” means requiring identification in order to prevent voter fraud. Is the U.S. really, as Obama says, “the only country in the advanced world” that imposes such a minimal requirement?
Of course not. In fact, we are pretty much the only country that doesn’t. John Fund provides useful background:
Of course not. In fact, we are pretty much the only country that doesn’t. John Fund provides useful background:
|
Almost all industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting.
*** The vast majority of countries require voter ID — usually photo ID — to prevent fraud and duplicate votes at the polls. Our neighbors do. Canada requires voter ID. Mexico’s “Credencial para Votar” has a hologram, a photo, and other information embedded in it, and it is impossible to effectively tamper with. Confidence in the integrity of elections has soared since its introduction in the 1990s. At a 2012 conference in Washington at which election officials from more than 60 countries met to observe the U.S. presidential election, most were astonished that so many U.S. states don’t require voter ID. |
Goodbye, Obama
The outgoing president leaves a loaded gun in the Oval Office.
Gene Healy from the February 2017 issue - view article in the Digital Edition REASON
In the presidency's long march toward full-spectrum dominance over American life, the POTUS has become, among other things, host in chief of our national talk show. Barack Obama fulfilled that role better than most. Our 44th president never seemed more completely in his element than when trading zingers at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. We find it reassuring somehow to be reminded that the guy with the kill list has a sense of humor.
At the 2015 version of the annual press and pols confab, Obama got one of his bigger laugh lines when he joked: "Dick Cheney says he thinks I'm the worst president of his lifetime. Which is interesting because I think Dick Cheney is the worst president of my lifetime." But the jibe had a funny-because-it's-true element that Obama didn't intend. As George W. Bush's "co-president," Cheney repeatedly described the team's mission as "leaving the presidency stronger than we found it." In that respect, Cheney and Obama have more in common than either would care to acknowledge.
As a young man, biographer David Maraniss reports, Obama developed "an intense sense of mission…sometimes bordering [on] messianic." By the time the Oval Office was in his sights, he'd decided "his mission was to leave a legacy as a president of consequence."
Mission accomplished: As Obama's tenure comes to a close, it's clear his has been a presidency of enormous consequence.
But his most lasting legacy will be one few—perhaps least of all Obama himself—expected. He will leave to his successor a presidency even more powerful and dangerous than the one he inherited from Bush. The new powers he's forged now pass on to celebreality billionaire Donald J. Trump, a man Obama considers "unfit to serve as president"—someone who can't be trusted with his own Twitter account, let alone the nuclear launch codes. Perhaps only those incorrigible "cynics" Obama regularly chides from the bully pulpit could have predicted this would come to pass.
'I'll Turn the Page on the Imperial Presidency'In his long-shot bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination, then–Sen. Obama ran as as a forceful critic of executive unilateralism—one, unlike the other leading contenders, untainted by past support for the Iraq war. A speech he'd given at an anti-war rally in Chicago in 2002 as an obscure state senator running for the U.S. Senate would become a key element of his sales pitch on the path to the presidency. Read more here
The outgoing president leaves a loaded gun in the Oval Office.
Gene Healy from the February 2017 issue - view article in the Digital Edition REASON
In the presidency's long march toward full-spectrum dominance over American life, the POTUS has become, among other things, host in chief of our national talk show. Barack Obama fulfilled that role better than most. Our 44th president never seemed more completely in his element than when trading zingers at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. We find it reassuring somehow to be reminded that the guy with the kill list has a sense of humor.
At the 2015 version of the annual press and pols confab, Obama got one of his bigger laugh lines when he joked: "Dick Cheney says he thinks I'm the worst president of his lifetime. Which is interesting because I think Dick Cheney is the worst president of my lifetime." But the jibe had a funny-because-it's-true element that Obama didn't intend. As George W. Bush's "co-president," Cheney repeatedly described the team's mission as "leaving the presidency stronger than we found it." In that respect, Cheney and Obama have more in common than either would care to acknowledge.
As a young man, biographer David Maraniss reports, Obama developed "an intense sense of mission…sometimes bordering [on] messianic." By the time the Oval Office was in his sights, he'd decided "his mission was to leave a legacy as a president of consequence."
Mission accomplished: As Obama's tenure comes to a close, it's clear his has been a presidency of enormous consequence.
But his most lasting legacy will be one few—perhaps least of all Obama himself—expected. He will leave to his successor a presidency even more powerful and dangerous than the one he inherited from Bush. The new powers he's forged now pass on to celebreality billionaire Donald J. Trump, a man Obama considers "unfit to serve as president"—someone who can't be trusted with his own Twitter account, let alone the nuclear launch codes. Perhaps only those incorrigible "cynics" Obama regularly chides from the bully pulpit could have predicted this would come to pass.
'I'll Turn the Page on the Imperial Presidency'In his long-shot bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination, then–Sen. Obama ran as as a forceful critic of executive unilateralism—one, unlike the other leading contenders, untainted by past support for the Iraq war. A speech he'd given at an anti-war rally in Chicago in 2002 as an obscure state senator running for the U.S. Senate would become a key element of his sales pitch on the path to the presidency. Read more here