Obama

The CIA Report Is The Purloined Letter and Obama Is The Prefect: My Break-Up Letter to President Obama

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Obama, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Torture 0 Comments

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some  things that were wrong.  We did a whole lot of things  that were right, but we tortured some folks. — President Barack Obama, Press Conference (Aug 1, 2014) “That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect,  who had a fashion of calling everything “odd”…

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2011 State of the Union Address

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments
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Making of the 2011 State of the Union Address

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment
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Democratic Political Playbook (Revised, 2010)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Dr. J's Lists, Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 Comments

It shouldn’t come as any surpise that the “Red Wave” did, as predicted, wash ashore in Washington, DC after polls closed on the 2010 midterm elections last Tuesday. Although Democrats managed to hang on to 51 Senate seats, they lost their “house” (a trauma all-too-familiar to many of their constituents). Republican, Tea Party and Independent…

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200,000-Strong Bartlebys Unite To Say: “Meh”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 8 Comments

The much-ballyhooed “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”— brainchild of America’s Ironists-in-Chief Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert— came and went this past Saturday in Washington, DC. Although the crowd-count estimates vary (as they always do), most put the number at somewhere between 200,000 and a quarter-million attendees. (TRANSLATION: For Midwesterners, that’s somewhere between the total…

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Exercise Your Franchise!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

If you didn’t “early vote” before, please take the time to go to your local polling place today and exercise your franchise. As Tom Stoppard once wrote: “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.” But if you don’t vote, you can’t be counted. Stop. Think. Vote.

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Parsing the “Anti-“s

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 8 Comments

Read no further if you’re not willing to consider the possibility that “anti-Israeli state policy” claims are NOT tantamount to “anti-Semitism.” The recent deadly attack on an aid-bearing flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip has re-stoked the fires at home and abroad over Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza. That blockade has been in effect since…

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Change I Can Believe In

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 5 Comments
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Cornel West’s Note to Obama: “How Deep Is Your Love For Poor And Working People?”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 5 Comments

Just a couple of days ago, BBC News posted a video message from Princeton Professor Cornel West to President Barack Obama, on the occasion of Obama’s first anniversary in office. Unfortunately, the video itself cannot be embedded here, but if you click on West’s picture to the left, it will take you to the BBC…

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Et Tu, SOTU?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 4 Comments

Not quite a year ago, Obama delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. It was technically too early in his tenure to count as a “State of the Union” address, but it was effectively that. We still had not come down off the high of his electoral victory yet, and Obama’s 2/25/09…

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