Obama

I like this, despite its admittedly dubious source:

Republican lawmakers in Washington and around the country have been focused on blocking Mr. Obama’s agenda and denigrating him personally since the day he took office in 2009. But even against that backdrop, and even by the dismal standards of political discourse today, the tone of the current attacks is disturbing. So is their evident intent — to undermine not just Mr. Obama’s policies, but his very legitimacy as president.

I like it even though it comes from that far-left, neo-Maoist qua Islamist rag aka the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/a-new-phase-in-ahpd anti-obama-attacks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

As for Obama, he's done some good things, very good things, things that will be hard to undo, and that will tilt or nudge our fractious and almost infinitely conflicted republic a little more toward the light.

I'm thinking of the Affordable Care Act, the seed of a sane health care system and increasingly hard to annul or reverse; gay rights/gay marriage, as in enough already with debating about such basics of civil rights; the focus on police racism and brutality, where I believe presidential attention (together with public outcry and smart phone technology has helped generate a new climate of opinion); and, just recently, the opening to Cuba (should have happened long ago of course but then again it didn't).

Then there is foreign policy, esp. re the Middle East.

By overthrowing Saddam Hussein, Obama's soulless and brain dead predecessor (in Yiddish GW might be justly and quite precisely termed "a shtick fleish mit eigan", a piece of flesh with eyes) destroyed whatever sorry but steady equilibrium had obtained in the region. The result is not that freedom blossoms through Muslim lands, as GW's no less compromised advisors promise, but that the Sunni-Shiite split assumes earthquake proportions, tearing most every society apart.

Other than liberally employing drones and bombs, how is Obama's foreign policy addressing the situation? Hard to say. I have a feeling he doesn't know. But the thing is Obama has demonstrated talent for learning on the job. His third term should be his best, his fourth even better.

I'm kidding. FDR blew it for the rest of us.

So Netanyahu, that militaristic Israeli bully, gets four terms, and Obama, with a sane and genuine feel for history,  only two?

Deal with it.