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Instead of a car czar Obama will have aPresidential panel oversee the restructuring of GM and Chrysler. This panel will be overseen by Geithner and Lawrence Summers.Ron Bloom, arestructuring expert, who advised the airlines and the steel industries unions in their restructuring will be named asenior adviser to Treasury on the auto restructuring. And the President will remain involved reserving for himself any decisionon the viability of GM and Chrysler.

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Dana Milbank points out the real reason Hagel was asked to step down- the reverses in Syria and Iraq. This was not even mentioned in the gathering of officials where the president announced his departure and praised Hagel. Hagel looked weary of the event throughout and must have been relieved to get though it, says Milbank. As even former president Carter says the U.S. acted too slowly, and even Rand Paul calls for aggressive action against the Islamic State, president Obama now has to engage in military action from which he wanted to exit. President Obama looks for a new defense secretary to provide better guidance for the new situation he faces.

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A sense of public perceptions that the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups is not something that happens in America.

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Wallsten describes the tense and now frayed relationship between Obama and immigration groups and the way this has evolved from idealism to frustration to mere coexistence amid loss of faith. Obama's frustration expressed in words such as "I am not a king." And the immigration groups voicing their concerns about Obama's loss of credibility, as minorities especially Hispanics have fared poorly during his adminsitration, hit by rising deportations, foreclosures and the impact of high unemployment in construction and other sectors.

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New York Times readers respond to Drew Western's article in Sunday Review, NYT of August 7, 2011. Readers express disappointment with President Obama's lack of courage and initiative.

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A partnership between rivals and the movement towards the 2016 U.S. elections.

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The fiscal 2016 U.S. budget of president Obama proposes government spending at 7% or $74 billion above the caps set in a bipartisan deficit reduction deal reached in 2011. It proposes $561 billion in defense spending with an increase of $38 billion, and $530 billion in non defense spending with an increase of $37 billion. Across the board cuts known as the sequester were set in 2013 following a 2011 bipartisan budget deal plan to take $2 trillion out of the federal budget deficit over 10 years. Spending caps were set at the time and a supercommitte was setup to look for ways to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal budget. With the failure of the supercommittee the sequester went into effect until Sen. Murray (Democrat) and Sen Paul Ryan (Republican ) agreed to ease cuts through fiscal year 2015 ending in September. The Democratic president's effort is to remove the caps in 2016 to invest more in infrastructure, medical research, other strategic priorities and defense.

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How Obama appealed to both sides, the religious and the secular in Turkey, choosing his words with care. For the secularists the emphasis on Turkey as "a strong and secular democracy" and not as moderate Muslim which has different connotations, and for the religious references to the Muslim world and the idea of mutual interest and mutual respect. Its hard to say but it may have created some sense of comfort on both sides and created asense that these two can coexist and should coexist peacefully in contrast to the tension in the past.

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The US envoy to Belarus responds to overtures from Belarus's leader Lukashenko for improved relations, release of hundreds of political prisoners including the husband of a opposition leader who is thought to have won the last Belarus open elections in 2020. Today it is not realized that politicians with lack of vision or foresight - Bush, Obama, Merkel, failed to grasp that in 2020 two events happened that were linked- the Belarus electons bringing another pro-EU government on Russia's border which was squashed before it could take office and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong also squashed in 2020 by China PRC. Crimea was made part of Russia in 2014 when Ukrainian protesters in Kviv and Lviv near Poland ousted the government of pro Russia leader Yanukovych in the Maidan revolution. Russia under Putin responded 2014-2020 with a simmering effort to take parts of eastern Ukraine that were close to and sympathetic to Russia. This was an effort to counter NATO or pro-EU countries coming to Russia's borders in the way JFK opposed pro-Russian regime in Cuba. Obama and Merkel never understood or grasped this or were too involved in the eurozone, migration crises (Merkel) or war in Afghanistan (Obama). The result was that in 2020 Russia helped squash the election results in Belarus with another pro-EU government impending. Within 2 years Russia under Putin with tacit Chinese support invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Belarus shares a border with Russia and it is closely allied with Russia in the Eurasian Economic Zone that includes former Soviet Bloc countries such as Kazakhstan. Gradually following the recovery of the Russian economy by 2010 the emphasis shifted to create something similar to the Soviet Union, a bloc of countries in central Asia and in Eastern Europe that are part of a Russian sphere of influence. For much of the period of the Obama/ Merkel administrations in US and Germany this was ignored as most of the politicians never gave Russia the importance it sought, not accepting that the economic power was not measured only in GDP- also in science and technology, nuclear technologies, space, in energy resources, and Russia's position in Northern/Central Europe and Central Asia since 1700.  It is this situation that the DJT administration faced with US challenges of the Mexican and Venezuelan drug and people trafficking in the western hemisphere has responded with the Monroe Doctrine to reassert American influence in Latin America by respecting Russia's effort to have some measure of influence on its borders, that the US seeks on it's borders. Without Russian or Chinese intervention in Latin America and with the the Monroe Doctrine in place America can protect the interests of the American people and the people of Latin America for free and good government. What Bush, Obama, Merkel lost sight of is that by each power having some strong measure of influence in their regions, and the tendencies for benevolent influence put in place, there is significantly more room for respecting the hopes and aspirations of people in their regions through democratic or other people oriented forms of government than by the situation in which economically the US was dominant after the fall of the Berlin Wall but other influences would lead to US decline- open but not free trade with China, and the recovery of the Russian economy, drug and people trafficking by gangs in Latin America where the Monroe Doctrine for US leadership had prevailed till the 1960's. ...

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Four former close advisors of U.S. president Obama in a public statement say they fear the current Iran negotiations fall short of reaching a 'good' agreement. The statement says " We fear that the current negotiations, unless concluded along the lines outlined in this paper and buttressed by a resolute regional strategy, may fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a 'good' agreement." The advisors are Dennis Ross, David Petraeus, Gary Samore, Robert Einhorn and James Cartwright. It sets strict inspections for all sites, including Revolutionary Corps and military sites, as a precondition for any significant lifting of sanctions. The statement goes further in saying about Iran's development of a nuclear weapon: "The United States must go on record now that it is committed to using all means necessary, including military force, to prevent this." The statement was released from a study group of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Ayatollah Khamanei in a televised speech on June 23, 2015, stated military and Revolutionary Corps sites would not be included in snap inspections, and economic sanctions should be lifted immediately. ...

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An interview with the President in which he says "the only real regulatory approach I've been interested in is in raising fuel efficiency standards so we can wean ourselves off dependency on foreign oil." Mr. Obama is saying that his real desire is to be doing less, when is has had to do more. The key words he comes back to are rules of the road, transparency and openness. The government's role in his view is to set clear rules of the road, but not to so few rules that you have the kind of situation that ocurred to setup this bubble and the financial collapse. In his view the right rules won't stifle finnacial marketplace innovations, but allow a recovery that does not have any of the bad characteristics of the financial bubble. He wants to see a sustainable model of economic growth that is not dependento on a supply of foreign dollars, or high levels of debt, and looks to the dynamism of the free market for growth.