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Sanitized image making for U.S. president Obama.

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The handling of the oil spill by the Obama administration threatens to permanently affect the image of the Obama administration. There may be a spillover effect from BP's ineptness that draws in Obama's and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's handling of the crisis. The Obama administration relied too much on BP to bring an end to the crisis. And it has not articulated aclear policy for regulation of technologically sophisticated industries like investment banking, deepwater oil drilling and other industries of this type where alot can go wrong. Tough inspections are needed in these industries and strict regulation for the proper operation of capitalism. Financial regulatory reform bills in Congress also have suffered from being whittled down so that strict regulation is far from being a reality to avoid future crises.

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Commisssion papers of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill were critical of the Obama administration. The papers said the administration's efforts were affected by a sense of over optimism, and this may have affected the speed and resources brought to bear on the situation. It is critical of the administration's casual approach taken to estimate the size of the spill, and initially underestimating the scale and extent of the spill.

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As Obama faces the situation FDR faced, between political popularity after election in 1932, and loss of some political capital in the first year by 1933, and a lot depends on political will and courage. He has to execute and implement plans for efficient government spending that builds jobs to replace those lost, and to use the investments in really productive ways including projects that provide returns for years into the future. As David Axelrod points out in the Frank Rich column in the NYT, people sometimes live in a parallel universe, which may be completely at odds with what the rest of the country caught in the economic currents of layoffs and collapsing businesses is thinking.

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The Obama adminstration and Democrats start the U.S. "fiscal cliff" negotiations with a call for $1.6 trillion of additional tax revenues, twice the amount of $800 billion discussed in talks with Republicans in the summer of 2011. During the Obama-Boehner talks in mid-2011, the Republicans and Democrats neared agreement for a plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, with new revenues of $800 billion. Obama then pushed to raise the revenue to $1.2 trillion and talks collapsed afterwards. The Republican side through GOP senior aides says $1 trillion in new tax revenues is where this could end up. The Republicans would agree to cap deductions for the wealthy as proposed by Feldstein-Romney, and the Democrats would agree to changing Social Security and increasing the Medicare eligibility age to above 65 as proposed by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Maryland) in such a scenario.

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Views of Barrack Obama on economic poliies if he were President including raising the tax rate on capital gains anywhere between 20 and 25% with exemptions for the middle class, keeping the top tax rate at around 39% and keeping economic policy flexible to respond to what the economic situation is in the beginning of 2009 if it changes.

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Obama wins South Carolina Edwards home base by 55% to Clinton's 27%, and Edward's 18%. Obama wins 24% of the white vote. What happens when the white men who voted for Edwards choose between Clinton and Obama ? As many white men voted for Obama as for Clinton. And 70% of white voters in exit poll by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool of television networks say they would be satisfied if Obama wins the Democratic nomination. When asked if the country was definitely ready for a black President 25% of white voters said yes. Obama's coalition of young people, black people, and white male voters, alienated by the Clintons and working through the internet and other media outside of the establishment, may resemble the one put together in South Korea by young people to put an outsider in the President's position a few years ago.

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Just look at the term sheet for the loans and you see that the auto bridge loans have given Obama enormous influence in reshaping the auto industry.

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Cinema Producer James Cameron and fears of Netflix ending or downshifting cinema with its streaming services if it acquired Paramount.  There is also the situation of DJT comments on Obama foreign minister Susan Rice, a Board member of Netflix, and Netflix connections to Obama's Higher Ground company. Susan Rice had criticized the president and Republicans.

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The Nebraska Supreme Court reverses a lower court ruling clearing a hurdle for construction of the Keystone pipeline. At about the same time the U.S. House of Representatives voted 266 to 153 in Jan. 2014 to pass a bill approving the project. It will pass a Senate vote. President Obama says he will veto the bill. The pressure clearly increases on Obama to approve the pipeline.

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Obama is not going to shy away from developing a solution for the 12 million estimated illegal immigrants in the country, for some form of path to legal staus. The issue will be taken up this year. It does not have the same priorities as health care and energy and education, but as a human issue it will be addressed this year. The lives of people who are doing a lot of the work Americans normally do not want to do is entertwined with the economic crisis, as the lives of these immigrants are likely to be made even more difficult by this crisis. The idea is to give those who are here, and as it appears are likely to remain here, and their families, the opportunity to lead normal lives. Not see families broken or torn apart as a husband or wife has status and the other does not, or lives worsen for those who have done the menial and labor intensive jobs in factories, agriculture and in construction, that Americans born to parents from an earlier generation of immigrants do not wish to do because they have better opportunities. As it is an issue that has drawn opposition and aroused emotions, it will be tackled by framing it as "policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system." Rep. Gutierrez, who is from Chicago, is building support for the cause by speaking at churches around the country, and having church leaders speak at these meetings, in a movement that is reminiscent of the civil rights struggles for black people. Mr. Obama will speak publicly on the issue in May, in the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both sides and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation by early fall. The plan would not add new workers but normalize the living conditions of people already here, and who information shows are not returning home. Its also supported by a key and growing constituency in American politics, the Hispanic voters. It was a campaign promise that Obama intends to keep, and if successful only draws the Hispanic vote closer to Obama....

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A 2007 video of Obama speaking at Hampton University in Virginia on race relations, on the slow relief sent to Hurricane Katrina affected residents of New Orleans because they were black, praising pastor Wright, and presenting a different view on race relations than President Obama has made in public appearances. The video has surfaced again in the final weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign, especially as polarization has increased in the last four years.

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The nomination of Harvard economist Jeremy Stein, who has experience in monetary policy and financial regulation, to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The nomination of Stein was presented to Congress by the Obama administration with the nomination of a Republican, Jay Powell. Powell served in the Bush administration as undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance. Powell has experience in investment banking and private equity. Powell graduated from Georgetown Law School and is now a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Former Fed governor Laurence Meyer's firm, Macroeconomic Advisors, said in a letter to clients that the nominees would significantly help deliberations at the Fed, and bring expertise in areas that the Fed needs to strengthen. Stein's published work has endorsed higher capital standards for banks.

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NYT's piece on Obama looking for clues for how he thinks and does things and how he might act, and some information about his background that relates to this.

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WSJ reporters tell the story of Chuck Hagel of Nebraska from his early days in Vietnam, a cellphone business venture, Senator during the Iraq war, gradual shift to opposing the Iraq war, serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee with Senator Obama, and the bond established with Obama over American involvement in the Middle East.

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This American asks how U.S. president Obama would feel if he found out that German intelligence agencies were monitoring his mobile phone for years even before he became president.

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U.S. president Obama's chief of staff and former deputy national security advisor, Denis McDonough, meets with Peter Altmaier, Chancellor Merkel's chief of staff, and Gunter Heiss, head of Directorate-General 6 of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service in July 2014. The meeting was part of an effort to improve U.S.-German relations following the problems created by NSA spying in Germany. This meeting took place following the shooting of a Malaysian airline flight over Ukraine and the call for stronger western sanctions on Russia. U.S. president Obama sought to convey to Merkel the importance he placed on German-U.S. relations after Obama failed to make a serious effort to soothe tensions with Germany over spying revelations.

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President Obama uses the solemn occasion in memory of the victims of the 9/11 attacks to lay flowers. 60 relatives of victims attended the ceremony days after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. In an effort to bring closure to the event the President used the occasion to show respect to the victims with silence and no speeches or remarks were made except for a short private address at the "pride of Midtown" firehouse. It was a time to reflect. It was in sharp contrast to the days after the attacks. Not much moved, the cranes on the construction site were silent, only the leaves on the limbs of the pear tree known as the Survivor tree rustled in the wind.

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Miller says the whole thing about the super-committee, the polemics between Republicans and President Obama about deficits and billionaires, could end up being a charade with Obama hoping to squeeze by in the 2012 presidential elections and the Republicans equally intent on getting 51%. In the end Obama's poor handling of the debt ceiling, including an unwillingness to go ahead with raising the debt ceiling even if it went to court, says Miller, shows a basic failure of the Obama presidency. In the end he thinks its not that the centre-left is going to be mad at Obama, they will be mad at themselves for believing he was going to be any different.

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Referring to the nine mile wide area from Israel's Mediterranean coast north of Tel Aviv to the West Bank at the shortest point, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu says of pre-1967 borders- "these were not the boundaries of peace, these were the boundaries of repeated wars." Netanyahu is reported to have made an angry phone call on May 19, 2011, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after hearing of President Obama's call for a peace with a return to the pre-1967 borders. Netanyahu told Obama Israel considered such borders indefensible and not the basis of a lasting peace.

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Experts in both the USA and China say that the trade deficit will remain a problem in US-China relations, as China now wants to see not an appreciation of its currency but some devaluation of its currency to promote its exports. Additionally both Congress and Mr. Obama are looking at trade relations carefully. Obama has been critical of how unfettered free trade has not been beneficial to both countries.

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Drew Western, a professor of psychology at Emory University, asks the question about Obama that is on many people's minds- who is this man who wrote the book "Dreams of My Father." And what happened to him? It is as if he is asking did they conjure up something that didn't exist, was there really too little about the man in a book written when the young Obama was still in law school- about his experience growing up between two races, except a remarkable effort to grapple with that experience. It would say little about the man himself, the choices he would make, the decisions he would face as he entered his thirties, and forties, a period that provides the crucible and the formative experiences in the development of character. It is as if readers had appended their own chapter at the end of the book and conjured up many things that really did not exist. And which would serve as a kind of Rorschach test experience where readers were free to read into the picture whatever they wished to see- and something Obama could use to be all things to all people. Drew Western draws from his knowledge of psychology and his direct or virtual conversations with about 50,000 people to reflect and make some hypotheses about what has happened to Obama, or what Obama was always about. He starts by pointing out what was missing in the inauguration speech and has been missing ever since- a clear sense of narrative and a vision, a story about what had happened and how it could be made different in the midst of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. Western provides several hypotheses for what has happened. Obama simply lacks the experience to handle the presidency -having been merely a community activist and not run a city, a state or a business, and had accomplished little before becoming president, and had an unremarkable career as a law professor having published nothing during his 12 years at the University of Chicago except an autobiography. And remarkably says Western voted 130 times in the Senate as "present" instead of "yea" or "nay," suggesting a tendency not to take a stand on difficult issues. The auto fuel efficiency standards issue may be the singular exception. The challenges of a presidency are much larger, and the challenges in 2009 were even greater. Obama could not measure upto the task. A related hypothesis is that given the lack of experience and the inability to make the narrative because of an unresolved identity, Obama is willing to do whatever it takes to dial for dollars and get re-elected. ...

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Rove says on the basic question of who can do a better job with the economy Romney was shown in a post second debate CNN poll leading by 58% to 40% for president Obama. The major difference between the two candidates is the plan put forward for the next four years by Romney and the lack of a plan by president Obama.