Former President Barack Obama has finally returned from his post-presidency vacation, where he got some much-deserved R&R in Palm Springs, California, and on Richard Branson’s private escape in the British Virgin Islands.
While Obama’s vacation style consisted of a backward hat and flip-flops, he looked seriously dapper in New York City on Friday in a black suit and a white collared shirt. No tie necessary.
President Barack Obama on Sunday campaigned in the battleground state of Nevada for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate he wants to succeed him in the White House – but he spent most of his time talking about the state’s Senate race.
Democrats badly want to get back control of the Republican-controlled Senate in the Nov. 8 election, and are sending Obama, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden to states where close races could tip the balance.
In Nevada, Obama reserved most of his firepower for mocking three-term Republican U.S. Representative Joe Heck, who had supported his party’s presidential candidate until earlier this month when Donald Trump’s campaign went into crisis mode by the release of a video in which he lewdly bragged about groping and kissing women.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Just days after President Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, Fidel Castro ripped the warming of relations between his nation and the U.S., angrily stating that “we don’t need the empire to give us any presents.”
In a 1,500-word bristling letter titled “Brother Obama,” published Monday in Cuban state media, Castro, who did not meet with Obama during the visit, recounted decades of U.S. aggression against his country and told Obama to stay out of Cuba’s affairs.
A POLITICO review of Barack Obama’s domestic policy legacy—and the changes he made while nobody was paying attention.
On March 23, 2010, President BarackObama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 906-page health care reform law known as Obamacare. It was, as a live microphone caught Vice President Joe Biden exclaiming to his boss, a big deal, with Biden memorably inserting an extra word for emphasis—and for history—between “big” and “deal.”
Obamacare would cover millions of the uninsured, a giant step toward the Democratic dream of health care for all. It also included dozens of less prominent provisions to rein in the soaring cost and transform the dysfunctional delivery of American medicine. It was the kind of BFD that the most consequential presidencies are made of, even though it had squeaked through Congress without any Republican votes, and few Americans truly understood what was in it.
.
Obama Portrait | Herb Williams, Crayola crayons, 2008
.
.
Click link belowfor entire review (please note: this is a six page review)
You have to be seriously geeky to get excited when the Internal Revenue Service releases a new batch of statistics. Well, I’m a big geek; like quite a few other people who work on policy issues, I was eagerly awaiting the I.R.S.’s tax tables for 2013, which were released last week.
And what these tables show is that elections really do have consequences.
You might think that this is obvious. But on the left, in particular, there are some people who, disappointed by the limits of what President Obama has accomplished, minimize the differences between the parties. Whoever the next president is, they assert — or at least, whoever it is if it’s not Bernie Sanders — things will remain pretty much the same, with the wealthy continuing to dominate the scene. And it’s true that if you were expecting Mr. Obama to preside over a complete transformation of America’s political and economic scene, what he’s actually achieved can seem like a big letdown.
The number of children who are caught trying to slip across the U.S.-Mexico border alone and illegally has quietly surged again more than a year after President Obama referred to the problem as an “urgent humanitarian situation.”
While the world has been focused on Europe’s migrant crisis, apprehensions of unaccompanied minors along America’s own border have exploded: More than 10,000 undocumented children have been stopped in just the last two months, according to U.S. Border and Customs Protection.
The 10,588 apprehensions are a 106 percent increase over the same Oct. 1 through Nov. 30 period from last year, when 5,129 kids were picked up.
.
Salvadorian immigrant Stefany Marjorie, 8, watches as a U.S. Border Patrol agent records family information on July 24, 2014 in Mission, Texas. John Moore / Getty Images FILE
Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent.
The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying Congress, the American public and the nation’s allies to support the agreement.
The two-page letter may give the White House arguments a boost after the blow Mr. Obama suffered on Thursday when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and among the most influential Jewish voices in Congress, announced he would oppose the deal, which calls for Iran to curb its nuclear program and allow inspections in return for an end to international oil and financial sanctions.
.
President Obama and Michelle Obama arriving on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Friday.Credit Susan Walsh/Associated Press
Sometime in the next few weeks, aides expect President Obama to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses. With the stroke of his pen, he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century.
The expansive use of his clemency power is part of a broader effort by Mr. Obama to correct what he sees as the excesses of the past, when politicians eager to be tough on crime threw away the key even for minor criminals. With many Republicans and Democrats now agreeing that the nation went too far, Mr. Obama holds the power to unlock that prison door, especially for young African-American and Hispanic men disproportionately affected.
But even as he exercises authority more assertively than any of his modern predecessors, Mr. Obama has only begun to tackle the problem he has identified. In the next weeks, the total number of commutations for Mr. Obama’s presidency may surpass 80, but more than 30,000 federal inmates have come forward in response to his administration’s call for clemency applications. A cumbersome review process has advanced only a small fraction of them. And just a small fraction of those have reached the president’s desk for a signature.
.
Even though President Obama is expected to commute dozens of sentences, he will barely make a dent in clemency applications.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
After five years and more than 50 votes in Congress, the Republican campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act is essentially over.
GOP congressional leaders, unable to roll back the law while President Obama remains in office and unwilling to again threaten a government shutdown to pressure him, are focused on other issues, including trade and tax reform.
Less noted, senior Republican lawmakers have quietly incorporated many of the law’s key protections into their own proposals, including guaranteeing coverage and providing government assistance to help consumers purchase insurance.
President Barack Obama on Saturday declared his refusal to refight the Cold War battles while Cuban President Raul Castro rallied to his defense, absolving Obama of fault for the U.S. blockade in a stunning reversal of more than 50 years of animosity between the United States and Cuba.
“In my opinion, President Obama is an honest man,” Castro said – a remarkable vote of confidence from the Cuban leader, who praised Obama’s life and his “humble background.”
Turning the page on the longstanding U.S. policy of isolation, Castro and Obama were expected to meet later Saturday on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas – the first substantial meeting between a U.S. and Cuban president in more than five decades.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Obama Portrait | Herb Williams, Crayola crayons, 2008
.
.
James' World 2 