What Obama Did After GOP Congressman Was Shot Puts Republicans To Shame
JUNE 14, 2017
President Barack Obama has traditionally displayed more class in one of his farts than any Republican can on his or her best day — and the aftermath of the shooting of GOP Congressman Steve Scalise, who has built a career opposing any and all gun regulations, was no different.
While Republicans generally ignore anything bad that happens to people they don’t like, Obama reached out to Senator Jeff Flake, who was gathered on the field with his fellow traitors Republicans when a crazed Jill Stein voter opened fire.
“This is particularly raw for those of us in Arizona,” says Flake, who flew home to Arizona with Obama in 2011 after a gunman shot Democratic Rep. Gabbi Giffords. The attack occurred after Sarah Palin promoted an image of a bullseye over Giffords’ name.
Flake says that Obama, unlike his own colleagues, did not discuss policy or any agenda.
President Obama once again showed us what a wonderful man he is. It’s a pity that his replacement isn’t even half the man he is.
FOCUS: Matt Taibbi | President Obama's Last Stand Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Taibbi writes: "Donald Trump may have won the White House, but he will never be a man like his predecessor, whose personal example will now only shine more brightly with the passage of time. At a time when a lot of Americans feel like they have little to be proud of, we should think about our outgoing president, whose humanity and greatness are probably only just now coming into true focus." READ MORE
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMAendorsed an expansion of Social Security for the first time on Wednesday.
“We can’t afford to weaken Social Security,” he said during a speech on economic policy in Elkhart, Indiana. “We should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned.”
The increased benefits, he said, could be paid for “by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more. They can afford it. I can afford it.”
This was a far cry from Obama’s position on the program in late 2012, when his administration argued for reducing Social Security benefits by recalculating the way cost of living adjustments are made.
“President Obama’s evolution on Social Security, from at one time being open to cuts to calling for an expansion of benefits … is certainly welcome news, but not at all surprising,” said Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit group that advocates for protecting and expanding the program.
Lawson’s organization has worked with lawmakers and other nonprofit organizations to oppose Obama’s proposed Social Security cuts and shift the conversation towards expansion. By the summer of 2014, a small group of Democratic caucus senators, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, started advocating for lifting Social Security’s payroll tax cap so wealthier people paid more into the system, and then increasing benefits to seniors. Polling by advocacy groupsfound broad support for expansion.
This idea became a central theme in Sanders’s presidential campaign. In thespeech announcing his candidacy, the senator said that “instead of cutting Social Security, we’re going to expand Social Security benefits.”
“It has become impossible for elected officials to ignore the simple fact that Social Security is a solution and not a problem, and that the only thing wrong with it are that benefits are too low,” Lawson said.
In both 2008 and 2012, Obama explicitly campaigned on protecting the Social Security program and rejecting plans that would cut benefits. But shortly after re-election in 2012, the Obama Administration proposed re-calculating the way Social Security’s cost of living adjustments work.
The administration’s budget proposed using the so-called chained Consumer Price Index formula to calculate benefits instead, which would slow the rate of benefit increases in the future so as to reduce overall spending. Social Security Works estimated that under the chained CPI the average beneficiary who just started receiving benefits would receive a yearly benefit $653 lower after 10 years.
Then-White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the move, saying that the budget Obama put forward was “not his ideal budget,” but that it’s a “document that recognizes that to achieve a bipartisan solution to our budget challenges we need to make tough choices.”
Obama’s backtracking set off a furious reaction from seniors groups and progressive activists, who for the next few months mobilized their members to pressure Congress to reject the proposed change. By April 2013, 2.3 million Americans had signed petitions calling on the president to back off of chained CPI. The signatures were presented at a White House rally that featured Sanders, who vowed to “do everything in my power to block President Obama’s proposal to cut benefits for Social Security recipients through a chained consumer price index.”
The senator mobilized a wide coalition or organizations, including veterans, women’s rights groups, and labor unions to oppose chained CPI.
Under this intense activist pressure, the White House was unable to convince its own allies in Congress that this change was worth the political costs. The next year, the chained CPI was quietly dropped from Obama’s budget proposal.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s evolution on the issue could also be traced to Sanders. Clinton initially shied away from the question of expanding the program, issuing only noncommittal statements on the issue. But after being directly challenged on the Social Security program this past February by the Sanders campaign, Clinton tweeted, “As always, I’ll defend it, & I’ll expand it.”
Her campaign website features a pledge to expand the program “for those who need it most,” although it does not outline specific legislation as Sanders does.
Obama didn’t explain his reversal. But as a candidate in the 2008 presidential campaign, he said: “In my two decades of public service to this country, I have seen time and time again that real change doesn’t begin in the halls of Washington, but on the streets of America. It doesn’t happen from the top-down, it happens from the bottom-up.”
Top photo: Obama speaking at a high school in Elkhart, Ind., on Wednesday.
FOCUS: Obama's Nomination of Merrick Garland Is a Lot More Ruthless Than It Looks Elias Isquith, Salon Isquith writes: "The first and most important thing to say about President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is that it might not work. Not in the sense that Garland won't receive the Republican-controlled Senate's approval - that goes without saying, at least until November - but in the sense that Obama's 'Godfather' move might not be the political checkmate that the White House hopes it will be." READ MORE
The president's nomination of an alleged moderate has some liberals scratching their heads. They shouldn't
he first and most important thing to say about President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is that it might not work.
Not in the sense that Garland won’t receive the Republican-controlled Senate’s approval — that goes without saying, at least until November — but in the sense that Obama’s “Godfather” move might not be the political checkmate that the White House hopes it will be.
It’s possible that less-engaged #NeverTrump Republicans, right-leaning independents, and establishment media centrist pundits will see the GOP’s refusal to even go through the motions with Garland as yet more proof that the party is unserious. And it’s possible that they’ll be so disgusted with Republican obstructionism that they’ll either vote for Hillary Clinton or skip 2016 altogether. That could happen, for sure.
But it’s just as likely that the political ramifications of Garland’s snubbing will be minimal, and that the president’s efforts to cast himself as The Only Adult in the Room will, once again, fail for succeeding. He and his proxy, Hillary Clinton, will be seen as stolid and reasonable — and as a result they’ll gain roughly zero votes that they didn’t have already. This could be a lesser repeat of the Grand Bargain fiasco of 2011, it’s true.
Either way, though, it would be a mistake to interpret the president’s nominating Garland — rather than a more unapologetically liberal or demographically atypical candidate — as a sign that Obama still can’t recognize the GOP’s bad faith. He recognizes it plenty. It’s the main reason, in fact, that Obama is trying to camouflage his offer as an open hand when it’s really more of an iron fist.
“Iron fist” is a bit much, I admit. Even at his most ruthless, that’s not really Obama’s style. As a former National Security Council official once said, the president is a “gambler”; and like any good gambler, he prefers to make bets that are as close as possible to a win-win. Garland fits that mold, because even if Republicans do accept Obama’s offer, Garland still propels the median vote of the Supreme Court well to the left of where it was just a few months ago.
But if Senate Republicans still refuse to even hold hearings for Garland, much less give him an up-or-down vote, then the steeliness that undergirds Obama’s plan will start to become more obvious. According to the New York Times, for example, the White House has reassembled much of the team that helped Obama win in 2008 and 2012. And they’re planning one last national campaign to punish GOP intransigence.
The Times piece is vague with regard to how hard-hitting this mini-campaign will be, but there’s no doubt that a significant portion of its funding, at the very least, will be devoted to attacking Republicans. IfObama’s speech announcing Garland’s nomination is anything to go by, it doesn’t seem like all of those attacks will be from the left, either. And this is where Garland’s reputation for “moderation” comes in handy.
[Garland’s] sterling record as a prosecutor led him to the Justice Department, where he oversaw some of the most significant prosecutions in the 1990s, including overseeing every aspect of the federal response to the Oklahoma City bombing. In the aftermath of that act of terror, when 168 people, many of them small children, were murdered, Merrick had one evening to say goodbye to his own young daughters before he boarded a plane to Oklahoma City, and he would remain there for weeks. He worked side by side with first responders, rescue workers, local and federal law enforcement. He led the investigation and supervised the prosecution that brought Timothy McVeigh to justice.
But perhaps most important is the way he did it. Throughout the process, Merrick took pains to do everything by the book. When people offered to turn over evidence voluntarily, he refused, taking the harder route of obtaining the proper subpoenas instead, because Merrick would take no chances that someone who murdered innocent Americans might go free on a technicality.
Such “law and order” rhetoric makes lefties nervous (MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described it as “reactionary garbage”); but it makes conservatives — the smart ones, at least — downright scared. Why? Not just because they think it’ll make stopping Garland harder, but because they know a wedge issue when they see one. And they know that Obama will answer their obstruction by driving that wedge as deep into the GOP coalition as he can.
In this scenario, it’s hard to see how Obama loses. If ratcheting up the pressure causes the GOP to cry uncle, then Garland ends up on the Supreme Court, giving liberals the majority for the first time in a generation. And if that pressure isn’t enough to get Garland a vote, it’s still going to cause the GOP even more internal strife than it’s experiencing already — which makes a Clinton victory more likely, too.
And if Clinton wins, then Obama has a few options. He can try to get Garland confirmed in a “lame-duck” session; or he can punish Republicans even further, as many liberals will no doubt advocate, by withdrawing Garland and letting Clinton pick an even more liberal nominee herself. Either way, the Supreme Court just got a lot more liberal; and the Republican Party just got a lot more demoralized and divided.
As noted in the beginning of the piece, it’s eminently possible that this doesn’t work. Republicans may prove just smart enough to take what Obama’s giving. But even if that happens, it wouldn’t change the subtly ruthless nature of the president’s gambit. You may disagree with the strategy — you may prefer firing up liberals to splitting Republicans — but there should be no question that Obama knows what he’s doing.
If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611
The President Jumped the Gun by Telling Democratic Donors It's Time to Unite Around Hillary
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
18 March 16
ccording to today's New York Times (whose recent track record of impartiality is hardly impeccable), President Obama held a private meeting with key Democratic donors last Friday in which he told them it’s time to unite behind Hillary Clinton in order to defeat Donald Trump. In “unusually candid remarks,” Obama acknowledged she’s perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate and some Democrats view her as inauthentic, but he said authenticity isn’t all that important, pointing to the fact that George W. Bush was once praised for his authenticity.
If the story is true, it was a bad idea for the President to hold such a meeting because:
Barely half the primaries and caucuses have been held, and Bernie is expected to do well in coming contests in Arizona, Wisconsin, Idaho, Utah, Washington state, and New York.
It’s hardly necessary to tell big donors to unite behind Hillary because they already have; Bernie isn’t getting their money.
Such meetings with big Democratic donors won’t exactly help Hillary attract enthusiastic Bernie supporters if she gets the Democratic nomination and needs them for the general election.
If anything, such meetings reinforce the notion that Hillary Clinton is the epicenter of the same Wall Street-corporate-Democratic complex that had far too much influence over both her husband’s and Obama’s administrations.
Tradition or guilt mandates polite behavior is not to speak ill of the dead. Antonin Scalia did more damage to Democracy than any, was Bought & Sold....may have been jovial and worshiped by the Wack-A-Ding extremists.....but did the greatest disservice to our Nation as history will reflect. Much will be written.... History will not be kind!
Reader Supported News | 22 February 16
You Can Feel Us Pressing to Finish
The urgency is not lost on anyone. Yes, for sure “today” will make huge difference in terms of when we finish this fundraiser.
FOCUS: Steve Weissman | From Scalia to Obama, What Rule of Law? Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News Weissman writes: "In significant sections of our political economy, the rule of law operates as it should, allowing people to know what the rules are and to see them fairly enforced. But, like the myth of free markets, paeans to the rule of law - sincere, self-serving, or ceremonial - too often mask the naked exercise of power." READ MORE
or almost 30 years, Justice Antonin ‘Nino’ Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench – a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions,” declared President Barack Obama. “Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy: The rule of law.”
High praise indeed – and completely bogus, especially from a commander-in-chief who acts as judge, jury, and (by proxy) executioner for drone targets around the world, and a POTUS who refused to bring criminal indictments against the Wall Street bankers who created the global economic crash in 2008.
Rule of law? Would you like me to sell you a nice bridge in Brooklyn?
In significant sections of our political economy, the rule of law operates as it should, allowing people to know what the rules are and to see them fairly enforced. But, like the myth of free markets, paeans to the rule of law – sincere, self-serving, or ceremonial – too often mask the naked exercise of power. They also trash the once-sacrosanct ideal that no one – rich or poor, black or white, government official or private citizen – stands above the law.
Even before Ronald Reagan named him a federal judge and then Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia added dramatically to this legal hocus pocus when, in 1982, conservative and libertarian law students at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago created the Federalist Society. Scalia served as one of the faculty advisors, along with his friend and long-time colleague Robert Bork.
The right-wing activists opposed liberal judicial approaches that had enlarged the federal government, reduced states' rights, and created “privacy rights” that the Constitution had never explicitly sanctioned. They hated legalized abortion and federal intervention to protect African-Americans, and they favored “traditional values,” unfettered campaign contributions, and an unrestrained right to bear arms. Presenting themselves as “strict constructionists” defending the true meaning of the Constitution, the Federalists framed their fight as a response to “judicial activism.” They insisted that the judiciary “say what the law is, not what it should be.”
Increasingly persuasive as American voters swung to the right, these arguments helped the Federalists become the country’s single most influential group of legal intellectuals. They essentially follow two overlapping schools of thought – or claim to. On the Constitution and its amendments, they base their decisions, they say, on the original intent of the framers and subsequent authors. The appeal is obvious. The Federalists appear to offer an objective way to make Constitutional decisions, which they contrast to the unavoidably subjective judgments of liberal judges and justices seeking to adapt what they call “a living Constitution” to situations that James Madison and John Adams could never have conceived of.
“It’s not a living document,” Scalia insisted. “It’s dead, dead, dead.”
Well, not quite. Take a look at Scalia’s classic 2011 interview in the California Lawyer. “In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation,” said the interviewer. “So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that,” replied the effervescent Scalia. “Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.”
Scalia appeared to be offering a principled and unfailingly democratic defense of Originalism. How then could he have joined in the majority decision in Bush v. Gore, which cited the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to override the voters of Florida and make George W. Bush president?
In 2011, journalist Robert Parry pointedly answered the question. He called Scalia a hypocrite. It’s difficult to disagree. But “Originalism” has hypocrisy built-in. Too often, neither historians nor lawyers know what all the different authors of any particular passage intended or how to weigh their differences. It’s largely guesswork and often – though not always – depends on the results a particular judge or justice wants.
“Judges are not competent historians,” explains circuit court judge Richard A. Posner, a Reagan appointee and one of the country’s leading legal authorities. “To put to a judge a question that he cannot answer is to evoke ‘motivated thinking,’ the form of cognitive delusion that consists of credulously accepting the evidence that supports a preconception and of peremptorily rejecting the evidence that contradicts it.”
Others may suggest a more straightforward view of how Scalia interpreted the ineptly drafted Second Amendment: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Did the framers intend the militia clause to restrict the right to keep and bear arms? Or did they want to preserve militias, now the National Guard, and also preserve the ancient English right for individuals to keep and bear arms? One can in all honesty read the text either way, and competent historians have no agreed-upon answer.
Scalia made his subjective preference clear in writing the majority decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, declaring that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual’s right to possess a firearm for self-defense or any other legal purpose. Liberal law professors, like Laurence Tribe and Sanford Levinson, had reluctantly come to the same conclusion, while two conservative federal judges – Posner and J. Harvie Wilkinson – condemned Scalia’s decision as activist and highly political. This was precisely how he and they saw the liberal creation of privacy rights and legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade. Leave both gun and abortion rights to the political process, Wilkinson and Posner argued.
A third case makes chopped liver of Scalia’s claim to “say what the law is, not what it should be.” In Citizens United, Scalia joined in the majority decision that the First Amendment guaranteed individuals and corporations the right to unlimited election spending.
University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos found this most instructive. “The men who drafted and ratified the First Amendment would have, it’s safe to say, been shocked out of their wits if someone had told them they were granting the same free speech rights to corporations they were giving to persons,” wrote Campos. “It would be hard to come up with a purer example of treating the Constitution as a ‘living document,’ the meaning of which changes as social circumstances change.”
Campos called Scalia “an intellectual phony.” That, too, would be hard to disagree with. I would only add that among the first to give prominence to the idea that money is speech were those activist liberals at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Was their reasoning any more objective than Scalia’s? Was it any closer to the rule of law?
Contrary to much that’s been written, Scalia called himself “a faint-hearted Originalist.” Over time he leaned more to “textualism,” which focused narrowly on what specific laws and contracts say – and emphatically not on trying to figure out what the authors intended. This was an even more objective way to make judicial decisions, he insisted. But he was equally ideological about that. His textualism “tilts toward ‘small government’ and away from ‘big government,’ which in modern America is a conservative preference,” wrote Richard Posner in his trenchant critique of Scalia’s “incoherence.”
But Posner goes beyond pillorying Scalia. He tells a needed truth about how his colleagues play the judicial game, liberals as well as conservatives. “Judges like to say that all they do when they interpret a constitutional or statutory provision is apply, to the facts of the particular case, law that has been given to them,” he explained. “They do not make law: that is the job of legislators, and for the authors and ratifiers of constitutions. They are not Apollo; they are his oracle. They are passive interpreters. Their role is semantic.”
Posner does not buy the pretense, not from Scalia or from any other judge or justice, left, right, or center. Neither should anyone else.
“Judges,” he wrote, “tend to deny the creative – the legislative – dimension of judging, important as it is in our system, because they do not want to give the impression that they are competing with legislators, or engaged in anything but the politically unthreatening activity of objective, literal-minded interpretation, using arcane tools of legal analysis.”
Rule of law? No, the rule of lawyers, with undeniable ideological, political, and experiential bias. This honest understanding should govern how the country chooses Scalia’s replacement and all the judges and justices to follow.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Americans are clearly weary of the critical blathering, not just the President. There has never been a Party as disrespectful and ignorant as this Republican Congress. We should be embarrassed by the conduct condemned by the rest of the Globe. Please support INDEPENDENT MEDIA to provide opinions and FACTS that Corporate Media won't.
FOCUS | 2015: The Year Obama Stopped Giving Any F--ks Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone Stuart writes: "2015 was the year Obama dropped the pretense. It was the year he openly bashed birthers, and skewered whiney Republicans in a harsher way than ever before. He also showed he's gotten even more comfortable making bold moves." READ MORE
Obama treated 2015 a little like his senior spring
here are some on the fringes of American society who have long believed President Obama isn't the person he purports to be. And, in at least one way, they're correct: Until now, Obama has presented himself as someone who can at least sorta-kinda deal with bullshit, as it is his job to do.
But 2015 was the year Obama dropped the pretense. It was the year he openly bashed birthers, and skewered whiney Republicans in a harsher way than ever before. He also showed he's gotten even more comfortable making bold moves, to hell with what his critics say (and his critics, as always, had plenty to say).
January 20, 2015: Drops Mic at the State of the Union
The first sign 2015 was going to be a good year for President Obama came in January, when during his sixth State of the Union address he teased Congressional Republicans determined to maintain that Obama's America has been a dystopian hellscape.
"We've seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years," Obama said. He paused, but Republicans held their applause. "This is good news, people," he teased.
"I have no more campaigns to run," Obama said later in the address. "I know because I won both of them," he added, winking.
February 12, 2015: Uses Selfie Stick, Says "Thanks, Obama"
Before the State of the Union, the White House tweeted a photo of the tan suit that sparked so much controversy last summer when Obama wore it to a press conference: "President Obama's suiting up for the big speech." The joke was at Twitter's expense, and an indication that the president wasn't taking himself, or his critics, too seriously anymore.
That impression was confirmed in February, when Obama acted like a goofball — making funny faces in the mirror, posing with a selfie stick, and invoking "Thanks, Obama" in a BuzzFeed video promoting HealthCare.gov.
April 25, 2015: Explains His Bucket/F-ck It List
If there was any lingering doubt that this was the year Obama lost all his fucks, he came out in April and told us so in the most direct terms possible. At the White House Correspondents Dinner, Obama spoke about being asked if he has a bucket list for his final couple of years in office.
"I have something that rhymes with bucket list," he said. "Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. New climate regulations? Bucket — it's the right thing to do."
June 22, 2015: Hangs Out in Marc Maron's Garage
In June, Obama traveled to Eagle Rock, California, where he sat down in comedian Marc Maron's garage for a revealing interview on Maron's WTF podcast.
The president spoke candidly about his frustrations with Congress, particularly when it comes to gun violence. "Right after Sandy Hook, Newtown, when 20 six-year-olds are gunned down and Congress literally does nothing, that's the closest I came to feeling disgusted," Obama said.
June 26, 2015: Sings 'Amazing Grace' at Charleston Funeral
In late June, Obama traveled to the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to deliver a eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine victims gunned down by shooter Dylann Roof inside the church the previous week.
During his remarks, Obama said it would be a betrayal of Pinckney if "once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, [we] go back to business as usual — that's what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society."
Then Obama did something to ensure the reverend's eulogy wouldn't be quickly forgotten: He sang a few bars of "Amazing Grace." This is noteworthy because the president was delivering his remarks in a historically black church — a church not unlike his own in Chicago, which he had to try to make voters feel comfortable with, and to some extent distance himself from, during the 2008 campaign. Seven years later, Obama seemed to care much less about what his critics might say; he was so unselfconscious in the moment that that he broke out into song.
July 16, 2015: Is the First Sitting President to Visit a Federal Prison
In July, Obama became the first sitting president in history to visit a federal prison. Two days later he commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, the most commutations in a single day since President Lyndon Johnson.
"These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years,” Obama said in a video explaining the commutations. "I believe that at its heart, America is a nation of second chances. And I believe these folks deserve their second chance."
The visit and the clemencies were both unprecedented, but 2015 Obama isn't an Obama who cares about precedence. 2015 Obama just wants to see shit get done, and one of the biggest priorities still on his plate is criminal justice reform.
July 26, 2015: Travels to Kenya, Swears He's Not Looking for His Birth Certificate
In July, Obama traveled to Kenya, where had a laugh at the expense of conspiracy theorists who've raised (and continue to raise) suspicions about his country of origin. "I suspect that some of my critics back home are suspecting that I'm back here to look for my birth certificate," Obama joked delivering a toast at a state dinner. "That is not the case."
It wasn't the first time this year he's cracked a variation on that joke. At the Gridiron Dinner in May, Obama told the crowd, "If I did not love America, I wouldn't have moved here from Kenya."
September 25, 2015: Obama DGAF About Anything Other Than His Hot Wife
This fall, the president and first lady hosted a state dinner honoring Chinese President Xi Jinping. All sorts of VIPs were there, from John Kerry to Madeleine Albright to Mark Zuckerberg.
But all anyonewanted to talk about after the dinner? Michelle Obama's bangin' off-the-shoulder Vera Wang gown. No one appreciated her look more than the president himself, as this photo makes clear.
In October, addressing the nation after yet another mass shooting, this time in Roseburg, Oregon, Obama got serious about gun control. He didn't seem mournful, as he was after the Newtown or Charleston shootings. This time he was angry; you could hear the frustration and disappointment in his voice. He sounded like someone who no longer cares about irritating the gun lobby or ruffling the feathers of Republicans in Congress who kowtow to those lobbyists' demands.
"This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loves ones because of our inaction," Obama said.
He predicted that following the press conference, "Somebody, somewhere will comment and say, 'Obama politicized this issue.' Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic."
October 10, 2015: Gives Kanye West Campaign Advice
At the Video Music Awards in September, as he was accepting the Video Vanguard Award, Kanye West informed the audience he would run for president in 2020. President Obama addressed the news at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser where West was scheduled to perform.
He advised Kanye that, should he decide to persue a bid, he'll be forced to "spend a lot of time dealing with some strange characters who behave like they're on a reality TV show. So you've got to be cool with that."
Secondly, he said, "Saying that you have a beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy? That's what known as 'off-message' in politics," Obama said, referring to Kanye's album by the same name. "You can't say something like that. A lot of people have lost their congressional seats saying something like that. You don't do that."
October 19, 2015: Tweets "Cool Clock, Ahmed," Sends Conservatives Into a Tizzy
One of the more embarrassing stories of the year involved Ahmed Mohamed, a Texas teenager who was arrested after his teachers mistook a clock he built and brought to school for a bomb.
Many commentators were quick to point out that Mohamed's arrest seemed racially charged, motivated by stereotypes of brown-skinned individuals as terrorists (and this was even before Donald Trump called for banning all Muslims from the United States).
Among the many celebrities and non-notables alike who had Mohamed's back in the aftermath of the incident was President Obama, who tweeted, "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great."
October 30, 2015: Doesn't Give a F-ck About Schism, Recognizes Baby Pope
Though they had a pleasant meeting when Pope Francis visited the White House earlier this year, President Obama and the pope certainly don't see eye-to-eye on every issue.
You know what religious leader Obama can get behind 100 percent? The pope's toddler doppelgänger, who also visited the White House this year, at Halloween, riding high on his toy Popemobile. The president more or less lost it with that kid, giving him the top costume prize of the night.
November 3, 2015: Mocks GOP Candidates
At a Democratic fundraiser in New York in November, Obama fired back at the Republican candidates who whined about how tough the CNBC debate moderators had been on them.
"Every one of these candidates say, 'Obama's weak, Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out.' And then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators!" Obama said.
"I mean let me tell you: if you can't handle those guys," he added, laughing, "I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you."
November 11, 2015: Addresses Folks Who "Want to Pop Off" About ISIS
At the G20 Leaders Summit in Turkey this fall, Obama, clearly weary of the critical blathering about his handling of ISIS, delivered a message to his detractors.
"Folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do? Present a specific plan. If they think that somehow their advisors somehow are better than the chairman of my joint chiefs of staff, I want to meet 'em, and we can have that debate," Obama said.
(The line itself was pretty great, but the remix was even better.)
November 25, 2015: Is Over the Turkey Pardon
Presidents have long dreaded the annual turkey pardon – truly the dumbest of the presidential duties. President Obama is no exception, often mixing his signature dad jokes ("As you may have heard, for months there has been a fierce competition between a bunch of turkeys trying to win their way into the White House") with exasperation over the tradition. As he said this year, "I know some folks think this tradition is a little silly. I do not disagree." Yes, Obama does not give a fuck about the turkey pardon, and thank goodness for that.
Another thing we can all be thankful for: This year we didn't have to endure any conservatives waxing poetic about the Obama daughters' lack of "class."
he first and most important thing to say about President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is that it might not work.
ccording to today's New York Times (whose recent track record of impartiality is hardly impeccable), President Obama held a private meeting with key Democratic donors last Friday in which he told them it’s time to unite behind Hillary Clinton in order to defeat Donald Trump. In “unusually candid remarks,” Obama acknowledged she’s perceived to have weaknesses as a candidate and some Democrats view her as inauthentic, but he said authenticity isn’t all that important, pointing to the fact that George W. Bush was once praised for his authenticity.
or almost 30 years, Justice Antonin ‘Nino’ Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench – a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit, and colorful opinions,” 
