BOLD like a Leopard

Razor blade handshakes:  How our president spent eight years squandering overwhelming credibility by pushing ideas that no one is interested in. This photo of Vladimir Putin passive aggressively throwing  shade  on  Barack Obama epitomizes their 8 years of back  and forth (ABC News). It's not easy to assess the record of Barack Obama over eight years in foreign policy and find an area where American relations with other countries have gotten better. It's a result that was counter-intuitive; as Senator Obama he traveled the Middle East visiting Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. He also visited South Africa, Djibouti, his father's native Kenya, Ethiopia, and Chad in 2006. Yet despite his ambitious travel schedule, part of his effort to build up his image as a person that has foreign policy vision, already was angering people when he glibly criticized corruption in Kenya. Did Obama's past record having lived in Indonesia for part of h...

Obama's policies on defence and cyber security: A true study in ineptitude and lack of planning. Barack Obama addresses US troops concerning the war against ISIS in 2015 (ABC News). In 2008 Obama was elected  claiming  that he would "only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home." After 8 years, it's become clear that he's come well short of all of the vows contained in that statement, this being perhaps the area where he has the most actionable power compared to other issues such as finance and monetary policy where he still requires much input from Congress.  This is not to say that he hasn't faced opposition, yet how can we not notice that he's gotten his wish on many issues pertaining to defence:  Withdrawing troops from Iraq (2012) Ending Don't Ask Don't Tell (2010) Drawing down troop...

Not Hot for Teacher: We are dumber, weaker, and less inquiring after 8 years of Obama's education policy. Whereas with many other policy areas, in particular healthcare, Mr. Obama was overbearing and inattentive to the objections of the public, with k-12 education he never attained the level of meddling that perhaps we would expect.  Six of our presidents were schoolteachers, and three of them were professors (John Q. Adams, W. Wilson, Barack Obama) prior to reaching office. William H. Taft became a law professor after  he was in office, as well as chief justice of the Supreme Court. Education in the United States is considered the foundation of raising children to be citizens that have the cognitive tools to be a well adapted and free participant in his/her community.  I've personally always been an example of someone that typically didn't enjoy formal education, I like to read on my own, learn things by myself, and generally dislike authority. But for a broader ...

Bitten by the bug: Democrats will have a harder time pushing public healthcare agendas now that the ACA's erosion and collapse is close to completion. The Obama Administration's main domestic agenda priority when entering office in 2009 was to expand health insurance coverage and access to all Americans. At the time, this seemed like a necessary issue to tackle. The Great Recession had cratered the saving of the middle class, deprived many of them of the healthcare plan through the job that didn't exist anymore, and they didn't stop getting sick. So what did he create? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare. Why did they choose a subsidized healthcare exchange as opposed to the socialist dream of universal healthcare? Simple: Obama had conveniently ignored the fact that both his party and the despised GOP were in the pockets of insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital lobbies. What did he do about it? According to the New York Times he ...

Money for nothing, and the votes for free Walking through grocery store aisles over the past 8 years, I have to confess that I did not feel threatened personally by the economic circumstances to the the extent that many people I know have told me that they did. I sometimes thought that these criticisms about Pres. Obama ruining the economy were inaccurate or at least exaggerated. I was typically able to manage my costs for car care, food, housing, and other basic needs. But at the same time, I know that the costs of a 20-30 something man with no dependents and relatively healthy is not the most vulnerable sector of the economy. My spending habits have always been frugal, and I picked a career that has been consistently in demand. So why is it that I never supported this president? To be quite clear, it took a genuine effort to stay afloat and it required a lot of discipline. One of the things that I made sure to do was not take any vacations or make any capital purchases like bu...