Obama throwing caution to the wind! | World Defense

Obama throwing caution to the wind!

LilAnn

MEMBER
Joined
May 21, 2015
Messages
385
Reactions
87 1 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
Obama sheds cool style for 'fearless' final lap in office - Yahoo News Canada


By Roberta Rampton, Richard Cowan and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama has reached the stage of his presidency where if he wants to break out in song publicly, as he did with “Amazing Grace” in a eulogy on Friday, then he’s going to do it.

With a year-and-a-half left in office, Obama is shedding some of his trademark “no drama” style for a looser approach, admitting that he feels more fearless and liberated.

It may also be in recognition that he has few big-ticket policy achievements left to enjoy in polarized Washington as the end of his two-term presidency approaches.

In a remarkable week for the president, a victory on Pacific Rim trade was snatched from the jaws of defeat on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The Supreme Court on Thursday validated his signature healthcare law, guaranteeing he would accomplish a central second-term goal, to protect the 2010 Affordable Care Act from being dismantled by Republicans.

The icing on the cake came on Friday with the high court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, a move Obama said was a "big step" toward equality for Americans.

After the court decision was announced, Obama took a Rose Garden victory lap.

“Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back," he said.

"And then sometimes, there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

Some Obama confidants described a more liberated, even feistier president, willing to mix it up with a heckler inside the White House, as he did on Wednesday. Or willing to use a racial epithet, long abandoned by civil society, to describe black people in urging more racial unity.

Why the change in style? He has more experience now, the president said in a podcast interview last week with comedian Marc Maron.

"Part of that fearlessness is because you’ve screwed up enough times that it’s all happened. I’ve been through this, I’ve screwed up. I’ve been in the barrel tumbling down Niagara Falls and I emerged and I lived … That’s such a liberating feeling," he said.

'A LITTLE FREER'

Norman Eisen, a former White House counsel to Obama and former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, said the president "feels a little freer now ... to let his heart show publicly."

Eisen has known Obama for almost three decades and maintains that the president's "core is the same." But on subjects he cares deeply about, including race, Eisen said Obama is displaying more of his emotions.

Obama’s speech on Friday in tribute to nine African-Americans killed by a white gunman in Charleston, S.C., was what the black community has wanted to hear from him for years.

This was not simply Obama as healer-in-chief, but a call to action from the president to end racial insensitivities.

“For too long we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens,” he said in a message aimed squarely at white Americans.

Senator Dick Durbin got to know Obama well when the future president was elected to the Senate in 2004 and they both represented Illinois. Durbin was one of the first national

politicians to embrace Obama's 2008 White House campaign.

"You've seen a much more forceful president in the last few

months on many issues," Durbin said in an interview, adding it was largely because Obama gave up trying to win over Republicans in Congress with his signature cool-headed reserve.

Except for bonding with Republicans on trade in recent weeks, "he's just had to try to devise ways to reach his goals without bipartisan support of Congress," Durbin said.

Republican lawmakers see things differently, describing a president they say refused to build personal relationships. Often, they said, they left White House meetings feeling as if they were lectured by a chief executive who just wanted to "check off the box" that he met with them.

And he angered many of his Democratic allies too by forging ahead on the free-trade pact.

Where Obama goes from here is unclear. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program could result in a deal or could fall apart. Russian aggression against Ukraine continues, and the West’s fight against Islamic extremism is uneven at best.

His long-desired bid for tax reform looks unlikely at this point as the country’s attention turns to the campaign to find a successor to him in 2016.

But for one week at least, Obama had memories of achievements to last a lifetime.
 

Corzhens

MEMBER
Joined
May 26, 2015
Messages
853
Reactions
111 1 0
Country
Philippines
Location
Philippines
Pardon me if I may offend the gays with this comment. But it seems to me that being free is not that way - breaking tradition. Wasn't it clear in the Bible that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated because of homosexuality? Correct me if I am wrong on that. And now Obama would say America is freer just because of that same sex marriage law. By golly, I don't see the logic, really.
 

Redheart

SENIOR MEMBER
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
1,239
Reactions
319 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
Many liberals support same sex marriage because they think two consenting adults who want to be together shouldn't be stopped. That's where the separation between church and state comes into play. If the church had it's way, then same sex marriages wouldn't be legalized but since the church no longer controls the government, they can enact whatever laws they please. Homosexuals have always been around so the legalization of Same Sex marriages all over the States doesn't [technically] make them free [they exercised that freedom previously] it just gives them equal rights to heterosexual couples.
 

sunflogun

MEMBER
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
36
Reactions
4 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
There are quite a few perspectives we can approach this from. One, from the legal perspective is more than fair that anyone can get married. Two, from the logical perspective and unless science does help, gay people cannot reproduce.
 

hubertjames

NEW RECRUIT
Joined
Jun 29, 2015
Messages
4
Reactions
0 0 0
Country
Australia
Location
Australia
Pardon me if I may offend the gays with this comment. But it seems to me that being free is not that way - breaking tradition. Wasn't it clear in the Bible that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated because of homosexuality? Correct me if I am wrong on that. And now Obama would say America is freer just because of that same sex marriage law. By golly, I don't see the logic, really.

And with all due respect to you sir, all gays aside, running a country based upon the murky moral teachings of the Old Testament would be a considerable mistake indeed. It's easy to cherry-pick the parts that one agrees with but it's inconsistent. It makes more sense to throw it all out, let people believe what they want but base actual policy on secular, rational thought. Fortunately, that's more or less how the USA runs.
 

STM

MEMBER
Joined
Apr 1, 2015
Messages
47
Reactions
4 0 0
Country
Romania
Location
Romania
Pardon me if I may offend the gays with this comment. But it seems to me that being free is not that way - breaking tradition. Wasn't it clear in the Bible that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were annihilated because of homosexuality? Correct me if I am wrong on that. And now Obama would say America is freer just because of that same sex marriage law. By golly, I don't see the logic, really.

This is not a matter of Bible or religion. This is a matter of rather real events (pardon me if I offend any religious people, but I'm just stating my point) and shouldn't be mixed with gay marriage. I'm actually quite contented because they made it this far. I'm contented because we're finally seeing some justice being shed among the way!
 
Top