One of the benefits of being a US President in your final year in office, as well as getting to decide who can and can’t come to your party, is the freedom to say what you really think – even if President Obama continues to appear to be mis-briefed on shared, as opposed to integrated, education here… ANYhoo… As the BBC report notes, US President Barack Obama was speaking in London to an audience of young people when he responded to …
Two videos went viral this week from two national leaders in Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu First Obama took to Buzzfeed to promote the deadline for people to sign up to his healthcare plan Then we have Likud’s recent funny election ads with Netanyahu as a baby sitter What do you make of them? Would a funny ad sway your vote? David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter …
The rising poverty rates in the Western world have been hitting the headlines. Writing for Slugger the NI21 Leader, Basil McCrea writes about what can be down about this issue President Obama has been criticised for plans in his State Of The Union Address aimed at introducing tax benefits for childcare, college education and retirement. His crime? The initiatives would be funded by raising funds from banks and rich families and pumping the estimated $300bn. raised into initiatives which would …
Having spent last week in Washington, D.C. and New York, I spent the weekend catching up on the news from home that I’d missed and indeed mulling over the conversations about home I’d had. Secretary of State Theresa Villiers announced last week a new round of all-party talks designed to break the impasse on the past, parades, flags, welfare reform and anything else anyone cares to throw into the mix now or at any time before the commencement of talks …
Tomorrow will bring the referendum on Crimea leaving Ukraine and joining Russia. Most people are aware of the sequence of events: the Ukrainian president turning down a deal with the EU in favour of one with Russia; mass protests in Kiev leading to the fall of the government; the new government being unacceptable in Crimea and then the entry of the Russian army. This sequence of events can be argued over at great length with arguments for and against each …
My marriage is a transatlantic union between a Midwesterner and a Belfast-born Northern Irishwoman. Fittingly, my wife and I were delighted to receive tickets to hear another Midwesterner, President Barack Obama, at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. With DJ Pete Snodden playing music by American artists, and the 2,000+ crowd performing a Mexican wave, one could be forgiven for thinking a pop concert was in the works. https://soundcloud.com/mrulster/20130617-obama-ni-01-hannah Rather, Hannah Nelson, a 16-year-old student from Methodist College, gave an excellent speech on …
“We need you to get this right.” – Barack Obama, Belfast Waterfront Hall, Monday 17 June 2013 Thought this deserved a special illustrated note. Perhaps we can carry this alongside us. Brian SpencerBrian is a writer, artist, political cartoonist and legal blogger. Actively tweeting from @brianjohnspencr. More information here: http://www.brianjohnspencer.com/ www.brianjohnspencer.com/
While it causes a thrill to see Obama in town, lockdown bloated security hassle and all, visits by presidents, prime ministers and even popes are now subject to the law of diminishing returns. Timed to deliver a powerful boost the fledgling peace process in 1995, Bill Clinton’s impact at the City Hall was bound to be hard to beat. Obama had a less visionary message to deliver to the obligatory “youth,”- that at least you have a different context to work …
At the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald makes a number of important points about the reaction to US Senator Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination as head of the CIA. From Glenn Greenwald at Comment is Free Last week’s 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s confirmation as CIA director by GOP Sen. Rand Paul was one of the first – and, from the perspective of media attention, easily among the most effective -Congressional efforts to dramatize and oppose just how radical …
The ever fractious relationship between the UK and European Union seems to be at breaking point, or so it seems if you listened to the Eurosceptic’s of the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party has come a long way from the days of Sir Winston Churchill, who is held up in Europe as one of the fathers of the present European Union, to more recent times were the party has ripped itself apart on the issue of Europe. Recently the leader …
So the fiscal cliff saga between the Republicans and President Obama had all the drama of the West Wing and even ended with resolution like an actual West Wing episode. The only fear is that this drama is set to re-appear in the future with both sides already highlighting the need for more debate around taxes and spending. So this cliff hanger was left with the famous words… To be continued. The last minute discussions around this issue highlights a …
President Obama’s Re-Election This has to be one of the major stories of this year, President Obama was under immense pressure from all quarters and pulled off a great victory. He now faces the long road of securing his legacy as a President, which, could be decided over the issue of the economy. He has already faced major challenges with his CIA Director resigning over an affair and his first choice for replacing Hilary Clinton pulling out. However, he …
Cartoon by Brian Spencer with commentary from Aaron Callan. So Obama’s made it over the line and won his ticket back into the White House. But already the US media are making predictions on the 2016 Presidential election. It’s interesting to see how the US media, starved of the Presidential election to feed on, turn their attention, almost immediately, towards 2016. Even though President Obama hasn’t even started his second term! What was more interesting was the predictions being made …
So the long drawn out process of selecting a US President is over. Barack Obama won a second term, quite comfortably in fact, with nearly a 100 more electoral college votes and 2% more of the popular vote. The process of picking over the caucus of the GOP had already begun live on air during the announcing of the winner. Fox News seemed to go into meltdown. Karl Rove, in particular seemed to have great difficulty grasping the result of …
Borrowing an idea from the FT’s resident cartoonist, Ingram Pinn, I will be submitting a cartoon every Sunday to Slugger giving a visual comment on the week past. So hopefully this will be the first of many to come. I’ve also teamed up with Aaron Callan who’ll be working alongside me on this weekend project providing analysis on the week’s main event. And so over to Aaron: I would like to welcome you all to my first blog for Slugger …
Everyone’s favourite Taiwanese animators have neatly summarised last night’s first 2012 US Presidential debate. Ouch! Via the Professor’s stand-in team. And with the incumbent heading for a more comfortable platform on which to revise his debating points after the fact, there’s this for true believers to consider. The fact is that Mr Obama has a talented, cynical team around him who have been successful in constructing a narrative in which Mr Romney is a comic villan who wants to ruin the …
The Onion reports, prematurely it would appear, from the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. From the Onion slice. According to sources, none of the students in attendance appeared to be discussing proposals for college debt-relief with quite the same degree of unthinking, asinine fervor as they did in 2008, nor did the older convention-goers seem quite as transfixed by the magic spell of actually believing they could retire with financial stability. Moreover, not a single woman has …
Something for Mick’s late night panel to consider, perhaps… The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, had a reasonably successful convention in Tampa by most accounts, and has followed up by stealing a march on the current president. But I’d tend to agree with most of Glenn Greenwald’s take on the US presidential election process. [If not the sub-editor’s? – Ed] Indeed. From Glenn Greenwald’s Comment is Free post But mocking CNN is to pick low-hanging fruit. The real issue is …
The Guardian’s Charlie Skelton is in Chantilly, Virginia, ahead of the, whisper it, annual Bilderberg conference – “a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced”. As he says at the Big G’s US News blog Everything’s set. The hotel is being primped and hoovered, the security is arriving, the press is nowhere to be seen, and I just had a really boring crab salad. It’s shaping up to be a vintage Bilderberg. …
As Hurricane Irene heads for the North Carolina coast, US President Barack Obama cuts short his family holiday in Martha’s Vineyard, by a day, warning the public that “All indications point to this being a historic hurricane”. The Guardian report adds that “Obama’s wife and daughters will travel back as planned on Saturday”. [Image credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project] The GOES-13 satellite saw Hurricane Irene moving through the Bahamas on August 25, 2011 at 1402 UTC (10:02 a.m. EDT) and far …
