#Obama administration

[black-fist-order]

[tomorrowusa]

People need to be reminded of Trump's woeful incompetence which came to a head during the pandemic emergency and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The Obama administration successfully dealt with the threats from swine flu and Ebola. There was no swine flu disaster, there was no Ebola disaster, and there was even no Zika disaster because competent people were running the US. Near the end of Obama's term, his National Security Council staff put together a 69-page playbook on how to deal with pandemic emergencies. It's called "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents". Of course Trump ignored the document and plunged the nation into COVID hell.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

Michelle Obama, in one of her best speeches ever in Kalamazoo this weekend, excoriated Trump's incompetence.

Michelle Obama laced into Donald Trump in a searing speech in Michigan on Saturday, accusing the former president of “gross incompetence” and having an “amoral character” while challenging hesitant Americans to choose Kamala Harris for US president. “By every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready,” the former first lady told a rapt audience in Kalamazoo. “The real question is, as a country, are we ready for this moment?” [ ... ] In raw and strikingly personal terms, she asked why Harris was being held to a “higher standard” than her opponent. Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election should alone be disqualifying, Obama argued. But now the people who worked closest with him when he was president – his former advisers and cabinet secretaries – had stepped forward with a warning that he should not be allowed to return to power.

ICYMI, here is Michelle Obama's speech in Michigan.

Too many people have been afflicted by Trumpnesia. They seem to have forgotten the catastrophe that happened starting on 22 January 2020 when the first COVID infection was discovered on US soil. On that day Trump told CNBC: "we have it totally under control" and "it's going to be just fine".

Instead of following Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, Trump did the usual bullshit Trump things like criticize the Oscars and rage-tweet from the bathroom. He belatedly declared a state of emergency on Friday the 13th of March – the day after the stock market crashed.

Don't let anybody in real life get away with describing the Trump years as some sort of utopia.

Some people disingenuously claim they don't know enough about Kamala Harris despite her 20 years in public service. We all know more than enough about Trump's egregious ineptitude which turned a national emergency into a prolonged national nightmare.

[eternal-echoes]

“So this is the fifth key feature of our common national life today: malice wrapped in the language of tolerance, sensitivity, and rights. It consists in an appetite to use power not simply to prevail in political debate, but to humiliate and erase dissent, and even its memory, in reworking the cell structure of society.

Examples range from the strange to the bitter. They include efforts to scrub Confederate public monuments from the South, and "progressive" academic attacks on American Founder Alexander Hamilton (of Hamilton Broadway musical fame). They include companies like Apple and Salesforce.com that attack religious liberty legislation in states nationwide and "use economic threats to exercise more power over public policy than the voters who use the democratic process." And they include selective shaping of the Advanced Placement U.S. history framework by the College Board, controversial efforts to "fix" democracy by major philanthropies, and bitter posthumous attacks on "unprogressive" public leaders.(31)

There's more. In 2011, the Obama administration stripped funds from the U.S. bishops' Migrant and Refugee Services anti-human-trafficking program. MRS was a highly regarded leader in its help to victims of sex trafficking. But it was defunded because the bishops declined to provide abortion and contraceptives as part of MRS services. The money was reassigned to groups ranked lower in quality, but more ideologically compliant, by the same White House.

The same intolerance marked the administration's fight to coerce abortion and contraceptive services as part of national health care. It tenaciously refused reasonable compromise on exemptions for religiously affiliated providers and organizations and deliberately sought to break any opposition-prompting a sardonic Wall Street Journal editorial renaming the Little Sisters of the Poor "the Little Sisters of the Government."(32)

-Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World

—

(31) Regarding Confederate monuments, see Cain Burdeau, "Monumental Fight," Philadelphia Inquirer, March 27, 2016. On Alexander Hamilton, see Terry Teachout, "Rapping the Legend," Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2016. On corporate political activism, see Monica Langley, "Tech CEO Turns Rabble Rouser," Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2016, quoting Georgia State Senator Josh McKoon. On American history, see Lynne V. Cheney, "The End of History, Part II," Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2015. On philanthropies and democracy, see James Piereson, "Philanthropies Target Democracy for 'Saving. Watch Out," Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2014. On attacks on the insufficiently progressive, see Lloyd Cohen, "The Posthumous Attacks on Scalia Begin," Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2016; note that in the case of George Mason University's law school, the attacks failed. Note also the similar spirit directed at the (still living) Justice Clarence Thomas in the HBO film Confirmation; see Stuart Taylor JI., "The Hollywood Hit-Job on Justice Clarence Thomas," Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2016.

(32) Editorial, "Little Sisters of the Government," Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2015.

[morganagotinne]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Eric Hananoki at MMFA:

Right-wing commentator Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, previously argued against allowing women to serve in combat roles because, he suggested, their presence might “exacerbate” the crisis of sexual assault in the military. In 2015, under the administration of then-President Barack Obama, the Defense Department opened up all combat roles to women. One of the vocal critics of the rule change in the media was Hegseth, who has since continued to criticize women being in combat roles. 

While Hegseth has cited several reasons for his opposition, he has repeatedly named the well-documented issue of rampant sexual assault in the military as a reason against opening up combat roles to women.  During an April 2016 speech, Hegseth listed multiple reasons why he believes women should not serve in combat roles, including that it could “exacerbate” the problem of sexual assault in the military. Hegseth said: “Another example is military sexual assault, which is a problem. We shouldn't be having military sexual assault. Everybody understands that. We need to be taking care of it. You think you bring women into infantry, different units, you might exacerbate that a little bit? I'm not saying that's anybody's fault, but that's an unintended consequence of that priority also.” 

Potential Trump Defense Department Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth opposed women serving in the military on the basis that it would worsen the crisis of sexual assault in the military

[black-fist-order]

"Trump supporters say, 'We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.'

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.

The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.

General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $80 billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.

While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.

Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans. He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.

Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.

He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.

His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.

He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.

For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.

Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.

All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.

While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.

He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting ground breaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.

Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.

Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.

Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.

Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”

Yet,

he never took away

anyone’s guns........

He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.

He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama was not perfect, as no man and no president is, and you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered?

If that’s the argument, if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama, I have one wish:

may we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more."

by Teri Carter, Lexington Herald-Leader

[tomorrowusa]

First a heads-up. Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman has retired from the New York Times. But he is now fairly active at his Substack. Occasionally we'll be linking some of his work there.

In this piece, Dr. Krugman argues that the MAGA war on the "deep state" is also a war on America's health.

One enduring theme of the MAGA movement has been hostility toward the “deep state” — what people outside the movement might call professional civil servants. Trump and company believe that the deep state is out to get them, which is paranoid. But they’re not wrong to believe that public employees who see themselves as working for the nation rather than for whoever currently occupies the White House pose a problem for their agenda. So what will MAGA do, now that it’s in power? Many observers, myself included, have focused on plans to convert a number of civil service jobs into political appointments. But just a few days into the new regime it’s clear that the assault on professional government will be much broader than that — that it will involve an effort to intimidate and politicize civil servants, too. And early indications are that one prime target will be agencies devoted to protecting public health. [ ... ] Public health agencies, even more than the rest of the government, are in the firing line. You can’t talk seriously about health policy without taking race and gender into account; yet according to the New York Times, one contractor collecting demographic data for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has already been told to stop work, and the results of an already completed survey won’t be released. But wait, there’s more: federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes for Health, have been ordered to pause all external communications, including health advisories and scientific reports. NIH, in particular, appears to have been effectively put in lockdown, with even routine meetings canceled and employees forbidden to travel.

He concludes...

If MAGA had been around at the time, do you have any doubts that it would have opposed all of these public health measures and accused their proponents of being part of some dark conspiracy? And when — not if — the next pandemic strikes, do you expect our battered, politicized public health agencies to keep Americans properly informed? If Trump is still in charge, do you expect him to respond effectively, as opposed to minimizing the threat and muzzling anyone who might contradict him? It’s hard to feel optimistic about any of these concerns.

Did I just hear the word "pandemic"? There is some distressing news out of Uganda from the Washington Post.

Uganda announced Thursday that a nurse, 32, had died of Ebola in the capital, Kampala, amid a new outbreak of the deadly virus there — the first in two years. The country has activated emergency response procedures, officials said. Uganda registered 164 cases and 55 confirmed deaths from Ebola over four months in late 2022. That outbreak ended early the following year. The patient died after experiencing fever-like symptoms and seeking treatment at several hospitals and from a traditional healer, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of the Health Ministry, said in a statement on Thursday. His fever, chest pain and breathing difficulty progressed to unexplained bleeding, a common symptom of a severe case of Ebola. Forty-four close contacts have been cited for tracing, including 30 health workers and patients from a hospital and 11 family members.

Ebola makes COVID seem like a fun disease. The mortality rate for the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa was around 40%. The Obama administration took decisive action to limit Ebola in the United States. Thanks to quick science-based action, the number of Ebola cases in the US was limited to 11 (eleven). Out of the 11, just 2 cases were contracted inside the US. 2 of the 11 died – 18.2% or less than half of the international rate.

At the end of the Obama administration, his National Security Council staff authored a guide called "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents" and left it for Trump to use. Of course Trump ignored it.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

The first COVID-19 case appeared in the US on 21 January 2020. Instead of taking decisive measures recommended in the Obama pandemic playbook, Trump said this to his favorite CNBC host.

While Trump dawdled and did the usual Trumpian things like rage tweet about the 2020 Oscars, the virus spread throught the US. He only got around to declaring a pandemic emergency on Friday the 13th of March – a day after the stock markets crashed.

^^^ dark red = deaths, orange/pink = infections

By March 13th, COVID-19 had spread to 49 states and DC. Ultimately, at least 30% of the US population became infected and 1.14 million deaths were reported.

If Ebola spreads to the US while Trump and RFK Jr. are in charge, expect a catastrophe.

[deadpresidents]

Is there any truth to the claims that Obama pushed Biden to exit the race?

I think Obama was one of many voices within the Democratic Party that was urging President Biden to step aside. I think Biden takes anything coming from Obama more personally because they have a more complex relationship now than when Biden was Obama's Vice President. They had one of the closest personal relationships between a President and Vice President in American history during the Obama Administration, but there has been a change because Biden was hurt in 2016 when Obama basically made it clear that he believed Hillary Clinton was a better option to succeed him than Biden was.

Biden felt validated in 2020 when he was able to do what Hillary couldn't do and defeated Trump, and the Biden-Obama relationship has been more distant since then. I think it's also probably a weird dynamic for both of them because Obama was obviously the dominant figure throughout his Presidency and I imagine it's difficult for him to have the tables turned now that Biden is President. In the public events that they've done together during Biden's Presidency, Biden always seems overshadowed by Obama and I think that causes some friction, as well. There is a genuine personal friendship between Obama and Biden, but there's also a competitive dynamic to their relationship. Biden has wanted to be seen as his own man in the Presidency, and Obama has wanted to protect his legacy, which he believes is undoubtedly linked with Biden, especially since there's so much overlap with their respective White House staffs.

It's been pretty obvious from the reporting over the past week that President Biden is still having some difficulty coming to terms with the idea of not running for re-election. I've seen sources outright saying that the President is "pissed off". I don't think Obama was as big of an influence in getting Biden to step aside as some of the senior Congressional leaders, like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jim Clyburn. It sounds like once Biden lost Pelosi, it became clear that things might get ugly if the President didn't make the decision to step aside on his own. Pelosi is still an enormously powerful figure in the party and a juggernaut when it comes to fundraising. If she was working behind-the-scenes against Biden, the President was probably on his way to losing the support of pretty much everybody in Congress -- that's how powerful Nancy Pelosi still is. I don't know how direct Obama was in those efforts, but the fact that many of Obama's closest political operators -- David Axelrod, David Plouffe, the Pod Save America crew (Favreau, Pfeiffer, Lovett, Vietor), etc. -- were making the argument on Obama's behalf was pretty clear to me.

[thashining]

No, to funding Childhood cancer.....cause elon said so?

Gabriela Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program

[time4hemp]

CAUGHT On CAMERA: Obama LOSES IT On STAGE After Black Men REFUSES To VOTE For Kamala OVER Trump!

[morganagotinne]

AND THE RESULT IS THE BLACK RACISM WE ARE FACING NOW.

[gamer2002]

Treason.

[trekkiehood]

There is only one president in my lifetime that I would let watch my drink and babysit my kids.

That man is Barack Obama.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alicia Sadowski, Jane Lee, Isabella Corrao, and Helena Hind at MMFA:

The beginning of President Donald Trump's second term have featured an aggressive and legally dubious expansion of executive power. A piece by the New York Times editorial board warning of a potential constitutional crisis said, “President Trump is trying to expand his authority beyond the bounds of the law while reducing the ability of the other branches to check his excesses.” While Fox News personalities have been celebrating Trump's authoritarian impulses, they previously characterized executive actions during the terms of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden as “fascistic" and “dictatorial." Laura Ingraham’s words were particularly acute, warning of the “homegrown tyranny” of a “king.” In a 2014 blog post that Media Matters unearthed from an archive of Ingraham’s website, and which appears not to have been previously reported, she implored Congress to use “traditional instruments of Congressional authority.” Echoing current criticisms of Trump's unconstitutional barrage, Ingraham wrote: “Stop yielding more and more power to a man who evidently feels that there are no legal constraints on his authority to rewrite our laws and our Constitution.” She also wrote that, “The issue now is whether Congressional Republicans will knuckle under to the President, or whether they will act to protect our freedoms, our sovereignty, and our system of government.”

Laura Ingraham when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were President: “Tyranny!” “Dictatorship!”

Laura Ingraham when Donald Trump is “President”: crickets (or applauding the fictional tyranny she selectively condemned)

[black-fist-order]

Heroes of Black History: Day 9...