Search Results for: obama

A minute-by-minute account of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the American Care Act, and how some news organizations initially got it wrong:

Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the mandate has been struck down.  The control room asks whether they can ‘go with’ it, and after a pause, he says yes.

The Fox producer reads the syllabus exactly the same way, and reports that the mandate has been invalidated.  Asked to confirm that the mandate has been struck down, he responds: ‘100%.’

The Bloomberg team finishes its review, having read the Commerce Clause holding and then turned the page to see that the Court accepted the government’s alternative argument that the individual mandate is constitutional under Congress’s tax power.  At 10:07:32 – 52 seconds after the Chief Justice began speaking – Bloomberg issues an alert:  ’OBAMA’S HEALTH-CARE OVERHAUL UPHELD BY U.S.SUPREME COURT.’  Bloomberg is first, and it is right.

“We’re Getting Wildly Differing Assessments.” — Tom Goldstein, SCOTUSblog

More #longreads on health care

We’re Getting Wildly Differing Assessments

Longreads Pick

A minute-by-minute account of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the American Care Act, and how some news organizations got it initially wrong:

“Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the mandate has been struck down. The control room asks whether they can ‘go with’ it, and after a pause, he says yes.

“The Fox producer reads the syllabus exactly the same way, and reports that the mandate has been invalidated. Asked to confirm that the mandate has been struck down, he responds: ‘100%.’

“The Bloomberg team finishes its review, having read the Commerce Clause holding and then turned the page to see that the Court accepted the government’s alternative argument that the individual mandate is constitutional under Congress’s tax power. At 10:07:32 – 52 seconds after the Chief Justice began speaking – Bloomberg issues an alert: ‘OBAMA’S HEALTH-CARE OVERHAUL UPHELD BY U.S.SUPREME COURT.’ Bloomberg is first, and it is right.”

Published: Jul 7, 2012
Length: 28 minutes (7,137 words)

How Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina is using technology and advice from high-profile mentors to prepare for November:

The day after Jim Messina quit his job as White House deputy chief of staff last January, he caught a plane to Los Angeles, paid a brief visit to his girlfriend, and then commenced what may be the highest-wattage crash course in executive management ever undertaken. He was about to begin a new job as Barack Obama’s campaign manager, and being a diligent student with access to some very smart people, he arranged a rolling series of personal seminars with the CEOs and senior executives of companies that included Apple, Facebook, Zynga, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and DreamWorks. ‘I went around the country for literally a month of my life interviewing these companies and just talking about organizational growth, emerging technologies, marketing,’ he says at Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago.

“Obama’s CEO: Jim Messina Has a President to Sell.” — Joshua Green, Bloomberg Businessweek

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Obama famously said he wanted a “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Why that never happened:

The way Cabinet officers relate personally to the president is—no surprise—often the crucial factor in their success or failure. Colin Powell had a worldwide profile and a higher approval rating than George W. Bush, and partly for those very reasons had trouble building a close rapport with a president who had lots to be modest about. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, may have a Nobel Prize in physics, but that counted for little when he once tried to make a too elaborate visual presentation to the president. Obama said to him after the third slide, as one witness recalls, ‘O.K., I got it. I’m done, Steve. Turn it off.’

“Team of Mascots.” — Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair

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Team of Mascots

Longreads Pick

Obama famously said he wanted a “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Why that never happened:

“The way Cabinet officers relate personally to the president is—no surprise—often the crucial factor in their success or failure. Colin Powell had a worldwide profile and a higher approval rating than George W. Bush, and partly for those very reasons had trouble building a close rapport with a president who had lots to be modest about. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, may have a Nobel Prize in physics, but that counted for little when he once tried to make a too elaborate visual presentation to the president. Obama said to him after the third slide, as one witness recalls, ‘O.K., I got it. I’m done, Steve. Turn it off.'”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jun 6, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,990 words)

A look at the Obama Administration’s process for approving drone strikes on Al Qaeda suspects. Insiders say President Obama is personally approving the final decisions:

President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.

‘How old are these people?’ he asked, according to two officials present. ‘If they are starting to use children,’ he said of Al Qaeda, ‘we are moving into a whole different phase.’ “It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.

“Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” — Jo Becker, Scott Shane, The New York Times

More #longreads about Obama

Excerpt from Maraniss’s new biography of the president. A look at Obama’s early twenties in New York, from the perspective of his girlfriend at the time:

Genevieve was out of her mother’s Upper East Side apartment by then. Earlier that spring she had moved and was sharing the top floor of a brownstone at 640 Second Street in Park Slope. The routine with Barack was now back and forth, mostly his place, sometimes hers. When she told him that she loved him, his response was not ‘I love you, too’ but ‘thank you’—as though he appreciated that someone loved him. The relationship still existed in its own little private world. They spent time cooking. Barack loved to make a ginger beef dish that he had picked up from his friend Sohale Siddiqi. He was also big on tuna-fish sandwiches made the way his grandfather had taught him, with finely chopped dill pickles. For a present, Genevieve bought him an early edition of The Joy of Cooking. They read books together and talked about what they had read. For a time they concentrated on black literature, the writers Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, and Ntozake Shange.

“Young Barack Obama in Love.” — David Maraniss, Vanity Fair

More #longreads from Vanity Fair

How the U.S. drone program became central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts. The president has presided over 268 covert drone strikes, five times what George W. Bush ordered:

But the implications of drones go far beyond a single combat unit or civilian agency. On a broader scale, the remote-control nature of unmanned missions enables politicians to wage war while claiming we’re not at war – as the United States is currently doing in Pakistan. What’s more, the Pentagon and the CIA can now launch military strikes or order assassinations without putting a single boot on the ground – and without worrying about a public backlash over U.S. soldiers coming home in body bags. The immediacy and secrecy of drones make it easier than ever for leaders to unleash America’s military might – and harder than ever to evaluate the consequences of such clandestine attacks.

‘Drones have really become the counterterrorism weapon of choice for the Obama administration,’ says Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who helped establish a new Pentagon office devoted to legal and humanitarian policy. ‘What I don’t think has happened enough is taking a big step back and asking, “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing? Are we fostering militarism and extremism in the very places we’re trying to attack it?” A great deal about the drone strikes is still shrouded in secrecy. It’s very difficult to evaluate from the outside how serious of a threat the targeted people pose.’

“The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret.” — Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone

See also: “Predators and Robots at War.” — Christian Caryl, New York Review of Books, Sept. 20, 2011

The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret

Longreads Pick

How the U.S. drone program became central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts. The president has presided over 268 covert drone strikes, five times what George W. Bush ordered:

“But the implications of drones go far beyond a single combat unit or civilian agency. On a broader scale, the remote-control nature of unmanned missions enables politicians to wage war while claiming we’re not at war – as the United States is currently doing in Pakistan. What’s more, the Pentagon and the CIA can now launch military strikes or order assassinations without putting a single boot on the ground – and without worrying about a public backlash over U.S. soldiers coming home in body bags. The immediacy and secrecy of drones make it easier than ever for leaders to unleash America’s military might – and harder than ever to evaluate the consequences of such clandestine attacks.

“‘Drones have really become the counterterrorism weapon of choice for the Obama administration,’ says Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor who helped establish a new Pentagon office devoted to legal and humanitarian policy. ‘What I don’t think has happened enough is taking a big step back and asking, “Are we creating more terrorists than we’re killing? Are we fostering militarism and extremism in the very places we’re trying to attack it?” A great deal about the drone strikes is still shrouded in secrecy. It’s very difficult to evaluate from the outside how serious of a threat the targeted people pose.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Apr 20, 2012
Length: 27 minutes (6,935 words)

A blow-by-blow account of a political negotiation gone wrong. President Obama and Republican House speaker John Boehner came close to a deal last July that would cut federal spending and bring in billions in new revenue. But a series of missteps led to its demise:

From Boehner’s perspective, it’s not hard to see why he came away feeling Obama betrayed him. ‘He had to have known that this was going to set my hair on fire,’ Boehner told me when we sat together in his office on the first day of March. He was seated in a leather chair by a marble fireplace, his cigarette smoldering in an ashtray at his side. Three aides sat nearby.

‘You have to understand,’ he went on, ‘there were hours and hours of conversation, and he would tell me more about my political situation than I ever would think about it, all right? So when you come in and all of a sudden you want $400 billion more — he had to have known!’ Boehner shook his head, as if he was still puzzled by it all.

“Obama vs. Boehner: Who Killed the Debt Deal?” — Matt Bai, The New York Times Magazine

See more #longreads from Matt Bai