The Smithian

June 18th, 2013

thesmithian

'...it is the first march by Black folks that seeks to demand action from the first black President: President Obama.'

June 16th, 2013

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June 9th, 2013

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June 9th, 2013

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[look of the hour]

June 8th, 2013

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I write this from Nigeria, a country that has just celebrated its 14th year of democracy. President Obama’s election enabled Africans to see America in a new light. I hope his visit will enable Americans to see Africa with new eyes. We know the problems of Africa: its poverty, corruption and conflict. After 246 years of the slave trade, 100 years of colonialism, African suffering and struggle are known. But perhaps the president’s visit will enable us to see the possibilities…Democracy and development are roads with twists and turns. In Africa, as the president’s visit will expose, the turns are now positive. We would be well advised to contribute to the progress, to invest in the promise, and to bolster the push for human rights, development and democracy.

Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr.

June 6th, 2013

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Both sides know they cannot afford to insult or bully—and neither man is known for it. More importantly, they know that history has been unkind to great powers who fail to come to an accommodation. Neither side wants conflict, but, as of today, neither can exclude the possibility. That is a powerful motivator…The summit in the desert will be the rare case in which neither side can afford to leave empty-handed—or to run the table.

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art: photo of President Xi Jinping and President Obama is from 2012

June 6th, 2013

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Many of the things that presidents do…aren’t explicitly in the Constitution, and many of the things we associate with the presidency weren’t done for years…after the Constitution was adopted. A president just set a precedent, and it stuck. For a minor example, there’s the president’s Saturday radio address, invented by Ronald Reagan and then copied by everyone since, although Barack Obama added a twist with YouTube versions…Everything from cabinet meetings to press conferences to “pardoning” Thanksgiving turkeys is part of the slowly built-up White House job requirements. Congress, on the other hand, has its role well delineated in the Constitution…the framers knew all about Congresses and parliaments—but they were inventing the presidency from scratch. There had never been anything like it.

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Many of the things that presidents do…aren’t explicitly in the Constitution, and many of the things we associate with the presidency weren’t done for years…after the Constitution was adopted. A president just set a precedent, and it stuck. For a minor example, there’s the president’s Saturday radio address, invented by Ronald Reagan and then copied by everyone since, although Barack Obama added a twist with YouTube versions…Everything from cabinet meetings to press conferences to “pardoning” Thanksgiving turkeys is part of the slowly built-up White House job requirements. Congress, on the other hand, has its role well delineated in the Constitution…the framers knew all about Congresses and parliaments—but they were inventing the presidency from scratch. There had never been anything like it.

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June 5th, 2013

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On Wednesday, Obama announced that Rice would be getting a new position as National Security Adviser; she will replace Tom Donilon. Samantha Power will take her job at the U.N. He called Rice “outstanding” and Power “a relentless advocate for American interests and values”…It is striking to see two women, both in their forties, both with young children, fill these roles at the same time, although other women have held the jobs before: Jeane Kirkpatrick and Condoleezza Rice, who, like Hillary Clinton, became Secretary of State.

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On Wednesday, Obama announced that Rice would be getting a new position as National Security Adviser; she will replace Tom Donilon. Samantha Power will take her job at the U.N. He called Rice “outstanding” and Power “a relentless advocate for American interests and values”…It is striking to see two women, both in their forties, both with young children, fill these roles at the same time, although other women have held the jobs before: Jeane Kirkpatrick and Condoleezza Rice, who, like Hillary Clinton, became Secretary of State.

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May 29th, 2013

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…as Christie said on Friday and Obama repeated Tuesday: the [Jersey] Shore is very much back and open for business. Hooray for that…here was an example in which the government did what it said it would do.

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…as Christie said on Friday and Obama repeated Tuesday: the [Jersey] Shore is very much back and open for business. Hooray for that…here was an example in which the government did what it said it would do.

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May 23rd, 2013

thesmithian

President Obama raised the question of whether the long-term costs of drone strikes, including the reported killings of innocent civilians and declining image of America in many Muslim countries, may outweigh the short-term benefits of eliminating specific militants. The month after a drone strike killed the American-born terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki, another drone strike mistakenly killed his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father.

Shreeya Sinha, Digital Editor, Foreign Desk, the New York Times

May 21st, 2013

thesmithian

I increasingly think of Obama as walking a tiny, little rope suspended across a Grand Canyon. Through four and a half years he has mainly kept his footing, in a way that becomes cumulatively surprising—and I say that even while disagreeing with many of his policies, notably including the recent security-state extensions. Every now and then…we see how hard what he is doing is.

James Fallows, at the Atlantic

May 19th, 2013

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May 17th, 2013

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‘There is still no evidence that the White House manipulated the public discussion of the [Benghazi] attacks for preëlection political gain, or that anyone deliberately lied by portraying what happened as a spontaneous outgrowth of demonstrations going on in the Arab world at the time when they knew it was a planned terrorist attack…’

…And there is certainly no evidence of the…most outlandish conspiracy theory about Benghazi: that the Administration left Americans to die because they were worried that responding to the incident with the force needed to beat back the assault would undermine President Obama’s counterterrorism record. Instead, what is in those e-mails documents the ways in which things in Washington are affected not by the big names—Obama, Clinton, Petraeus—but by the people who work for them, and the manner in which those staffers jostle with each other to protect their turf and their bosses. There is also a reminder that this “Administration” thing we think of as a single, unified entity is in fact a collection of people competing with each other.

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May 16th, 2013

thesmithian

[look of the hour]

Reblogged from

May 15th, 2013

thesmithian

‘…someone initiated an outrageous abuse of IRS powers. We need to find out who and how and fire those who went over the line…’

…And this genuine scandal is tied to the non-scandal of Benghazi and the genuine debate about how far the DOJ should go in punishing leakers of classified information. Individually, only the IRS affair seems a genuine scandal…But drama is the stuff of pageviews. And the chattering classes can only take a no-drama president for so long.

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