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International News Title: After Health-Care Reform Victory, Emboldened Obama Standing Tall Abroad WASHINGTON - The passage of a historic piece of domestic legislation has given U.S. President Barack Obama his mojo back, and in a surprising area - foreign policy. An emboldened Obama, fresh off his health-care reform triumph at home, is now flexing his muscles abroad, displaying a confidence that undoubtedly resulted from his steely determination to win a long and bruising legislative war with Congress. "It appears he feels he now has the wind to his back," Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, said Monday. "Internationally, it's definitely being played that he stared down his opponents eyeball to eyeball, that he persevered, that he was tough and he won. It's created a perception globally that he's a force to be reckoned with." Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan over the weekend was clearly meant to capitalize on that new-found position of strength. The president delivered a pointed message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, commanding him to rein in corruption. "Going there at this moment was well-chosen," Kull said. "He's on a high, he's got some momentum and he wants to associate that with Afghanistan." The president is also working on a new slate of international sanctions aimed at dissuading Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. The tough new stance, however, has deepened the tensions between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had reportedly been delighted by Obama's domestic troubles. The Israeli hardliner has apparently expressed hopes privately that Obama will be a one-term president. Obama fought back last week, giving Netanyahu a decidedly frosty reception during the Israeli's visit to Washington. There was no elaborate state dinner, no photo-ops of the two men posing together. The Obama administration has been irked by Netanyahu's insistence that Israel build thousands of new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by Palestinians. Obama had called for a freeze on new settlements but Netanyahu pushed ahead anyway. Palestinians had hoped the district would serve as the capital of their future state, and Netanyahu's actions were viewed as a brazen slap in the face and a rebuke to the White House. The Obama administration wants renewed negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. During their meeting last week, Obama refused to settle for Netanyahu's offers of compromise - including restricting Israeli troop activities in the West Bank, freeing Palestinian prisoners and making efforts to boost the Palestinian economy. "Netanyahu overplayed his hand," Patrick Searle, the British author of the upcoming book "The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East," wrote Monday on the Middle East Online website. "He evidently gambled that Obama's health-care reform would fail to pass into law, condemning him to be a lame duck president for the rest of his term - and therefore unable to impose his will on Israel." Instead, Obama won his health-care battle, and soon after revelled in a foreign policy victory too by finalizing an arms control treaty with Russia. "With these two victories under his belt, he now seems in better shape for a confrontation with Netanyahu," Searle wrote. "The word in Washington is that Obama would like to drive Netanyahu from office - or at least force him to restructure his coalition by removing far-right extremists." Indeed, with health-care under his belt, Kull said, Obama is now freed up to fight battles on different fronts. "There's no question that a president has a limited amount of time and energy and he was putting a lot into health care, and now he seems to have some considerable energy to devote to foreign policy." Domestically too, however, Obama is throwing his weight around despite public approval ratings that have fallen to about 46 per cent. After criticism that he bowed too much to Congress during the health-care debate, the president has seemingly learned his lesson. Soon after signing health-care reform into law, Obama announced 15 recess appointments to fill openings in his administration, bypassing the Senate and infuriating Republicans. He justified it by accusing Republicans of unreasonable obstructionism that would have pointlessly held up the appointments. The president will also now push Congress to close the campaign-finance loopholes that were opened by the recent Citizens United case in the U.S. Supreme Court. That controversial ruling allows wealthy corporations to spend unlimited amounts of cash on election campaigns. Obama is also set to overhaul the so-called No Child Left Behind education bill, and might also tackle a clean-energy bill that's been stalled in Congress in the midst of the health-care battle. "He goes into these negotiations, and into these legislative battles, with a stronger hand because people understand that he's going to fight for what he believes in," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a recent interview.
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#1. To: Intelligent beings on LF (#0)
"The word in America is that a growing number now likely greater than 50% would like to drive this socialist regime leader and his lock-stepping lap-poodle minions from office"
Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And the latest Eisteinian revelation from LF's resident Barack poodleboy......."Yeah, and Oswald was a right winger, too. He was... war posted on 2010-03-22 20:12:36
Obama seems to have learned DC reality quicker than Clinton did. Clinton got his budget passed and his crime bill and then sat on his ass until the 1994 wake up call. Of course, I've spoken with people who told me that Clinton was so pissed at Congressional dems that he did this by design believing his power of veto would give him negotiating leverage against the GOP. Anyway, the GOP needs to wake up to several realties not the least of which is that their sorry asses got thrown out, in part, because people WANTED Obama's agenda. And when they get out there in the late Summer and early Fall and have to actually campaign it's going to be a different ball game than "Just say no"... It's also going to be interesting when their rhetoric, especially in regard to health care, doesn't line up with the reality. When small business people start talking to their accountants and are informed of the fact that this law actually HELPS them rather than hurts them, it's over for the GOP.
#67. To: war (#48) Keep hiding behind the bozo, bozo. (laughing) You've always been a world class pussy. Badeye posted on 2010-01-14 16:12:48 ET Reply Trace
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