Tag: Opinion

As politicians drape themselves in the flag of free speech and freedom of the press in response to the tragic murder of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, they’ve also quickly moved to stifle the same rights they claim to love. Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic are now renewing their efforts to stop NSA reform as they support free speech-chilling surveillance laws that will affect millions of citizens that have never been accused of terrorism.

This is an entirely predictable response – as civil liberties advocates noted shortly after Wednesday’s tragic attack, the threat of terrorism has led to draconian laws all over the world over the last decade – but this time around, the speed and breadth by which politicians praised free speech out of one side of their mouths, while moving to curtail rights out of the other, has been quite breathtaking.

Richard (RJ) ESkow: Populism Rises — And the ‘Center’ Strikes Back

“Americans don’t want angry, defensive figures running for president,” Democratic operative Will Marshall told McClatchy’s David Lightman this week. But who, precisely, is angry and defensive? As the pushback to Wall Street’s influence on government grows stronger, it is the banking industry’s supporters who sound enraged. And as economic populism gains traction in Democratic circles, it is corporate Democrats like Marshall who find themselves increasingly on the defensive. [..]

Why are right-leaning Democrats like Marshall so worried? The answer may lie in the shifting internal dynamics of the Democratic Party itself. The financial crisis of 2008, the long-term economic issues which continue to plague the nation, and a growing public awareness of wealth inequality have all contributed to the consolidation of public opinion along economically populist lines.

Robert Kuttner: Make No Little Plans

I recently got an email invitation from a Democratic congressional office to come to a “watch party” to view President Obama’s State of the Union address. His “fourth-quarter priorities,” according to the White House-inspired talking points of the message, are “home ownership, free community college, and high-paying jobs.”

That sounds pretty good. But if you unpack the specifics, the president is offering pretty weak tea. [..]

In other words, Obama is bold when it doesn’t require taking on corporate America or Wall Street.

This president is also an incrementalist by temperament. Politically, he has always viewed incremental reform as a way of building consensus.

We should be grateful, I suppose, that at the beginning of his seventh year Obama has belatedly realized that there is no consensus to be had; that he is moving boldly in at least some areas, whether the Republicans like it or not.

But given that Congress is going to pass just about nothing that he proposes (with the exception of odious trade legislation designed by and for multi-national corporations), and given that his little plans, in Burnham’s famous phrase, “will not be realized,” Obama might as well think even bigger.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Hunt Terrorists, Don’t Scapegoat Muslims

The instant the horrific news hit that yet another pack of seemingly deranged nut cases debased Islam by shooting up the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store, nearly every Muslim organization, diplomat, and head of state, no matter their political views, roundly condemned the attacks. All were careful to point out that heinous murders, indeed any killing of innocent civilians, under the pretense of defending Islam, does just the opposite. It distorts it, mocks it, and fuels anti-Muslim hysteria. [..]

The maniacal terror attacks in France were clearly hate driven acts perpetrated by loose-hinged individuals. But they are just that, individuals. The swift condemnation of the mass carnage they wreaked by countless Muslim groups proved that. The harsh reality, though, is that it didn’t and won’t stop the anti-Muslim haters from twisting the murders to fuel their anti-immigrant hate campaigns. This makes it even more crucial for governments to hunt terrorists, and not scapegoat Muslims.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republicans kicked off their first day in control of the US Congress this week by moving to ban all abortions after 20 weeks, first in the House and very soon in the Senate. The House already passed this back in 2013 – with exactly zero exceptions for women’s health, or rape or incest that hadn’t been reported to police.

But I must admit to being slightly confused: Why is the GOP trying to ban later abortions when they’re doing such a stellar job forcing women to get them?

After all, Republicans are the ones who want to spend millions on abstinence-only “education” – as in those medically inaccurate, ideology driven classes on sexuality telling students that condoms cause cancer and birth control pills cause sterility. I mean, why go through all the trouble of making up such fantastical lies if not to make sure that sexually active teens are more likely to have unwanted pregnancies, right? And it’s working! Teen pregnancy is highest in states with abstinence-only education.

Joe Conason: What ‘Je Suis Charlie’ Should Mean to Us

Not long after 9/11, the leading figures in France’s Champagne industry decided that they would hold their 2002 annual awards gala in New York rather than Paris. At no small expense, they displayed solidarity with New Yorkers-and America-at a time of sorrow and fury, like so many of their compatriots. It was one more instance when the French renewed the bond that has existed since this country’s founding.

And not too long after that, disagreement between the French government and the Bush administration over the invasion of Iraq led to a breach between us and our oldest allies. The French tried in vain to save us from a tragic mistake or worse and were rewarded with vilification from Fox News to the floor of Congress.

By now, of course, we know that the French never disagreed with us about the danger posed by Islamist jihad, only about the means and priorities in combating that adversary. Today the French military is supporting the U.S. and other allies by conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq. That continuing alliance requires us all to repeat “Je suis Charlie” in the aftermath of the atrocious terror attack on Parisian satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. Yet while we owe that gesture to our old friends, we still owe them, ourselves and the world much more.

David Sirota: Gifts to Christie Raise Big Ethics Questions

Gov. Chris Christie’s appearances at professional football games to cheer on his beloved Dallas Cowboys have led to questions about why his favorite team isn’t a New Jersey local like the Jets, Giants or Eagles. But Christie’s bromance with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones raises an even thornier question: When Christie received free owners’ box seats for recent Cowboys games, was he complying with New Jersey’s tough ethics rules banning gifts and favors to public officials?

New Jersey’s executive branch ethics rules warn state officials that there’s “a zero tolerance policy for acceptance of gifts offered to you … that are related in any way to your official duties.” The ethics rules specifically prohibit public officials from accepting access to entertainment events from any person or entity that public officials “deal with, contact, or regulate in the course of official business.” The rules define one form of restricted gift as “admission to an event for which a member of the general public would be charged.”

In his role as governor, Christie has had myriad high-profile dealings with the National Football League and with Jones.

On December 17, a courageous act by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking in the state sent shockwaves around the world. Governor Cuomo followed acting State Health Commissioner Dr. Zucker’s recommendation based on a significant and growing body of scientific studies showing that drilling and fracking put people’s health and the environment at risk.

The impacts include health problems, water contamination, dangerous air pollution, threats to agriculture and soil quality, radioactive releases, earthquakes, and more. [..]

Despite the fact that New York’s decision is based on the best science, President Obama’s administration had the audacity to denounce the decision. Last week Obama’s Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said fracking bans make it “very difficult for the industry to figure out” rules in different areas, and stem from what she sees as bad science and misinformation. That simply doesn’t hold up to the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from leading scientific researchers and institutions demonstrating problems and harms. And frankly, we would like to see our public officials putting public health before concerns about the oil and gas industry’s confusion.

You may ask why President Obama had Interior Secretary Jewell be the one to publicly push back on New York’s fracking ban. The answer is likely simple. She is currently polishing up regulations to frack our national forests and federal lands, expected soon. This has to stop.

Amy Goodman: lose Guantanamo-Then Give It Back to Cuba

This week marks the 13th anniversary of the arrival of the first post-9/11 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, the most notorious prison on the planet. This grim anniversary, and the beginning of normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S and Cuba, serves as a reminder that we need to permanently close the prison and return the land to its rightful owners, the Cuban people. It is time to put an end to this dark chapter of United States history. [..]

The United States took Guantanamo Bay by force in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, and extracted an indefinite lease on the property from Cuba in 1903. Returning Guantanamo Bay to Cuba will begin to right more than a century of wrongs that the U.S. government has perpetrated there. Most importantly, the return of the Guantanamo Bay prison and naval base will make it harder for any future war criminals, whether in the White House, the Pentagon or the CIA and their enthusiastic cheerleaders in Congress, to use Guantanamo as their distant dungeon, to inflict torture and terror on prisoners, many of them innocent, far from the eyes of the people of the United States, and far from the reach of criminal courts.

Jessica Bulman-Pozen and David Pozen: The NYPD found a more destructive way of protesting than shutting down traffic

Civil disobedience is a familiar protest tactic. From Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr, some of our most iconic reformers have engaged in nonviolent, unlawful social action.

But it isn’t always necessary to disobey the law to defy a legal regime. Critics can also press their point by adhering to directives in ways that are consistent with their literal language but inconsistent with common practice or common sense – a tactic we call “uncivil obedience”.

In the ongoing struggle over police reform, civil disobedience is now being met with uncivil obedience. After protesters outraged by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner shut down streets, bridges and shopping malls, the head of New York City’s largest police union urged officers to pay close attention to the regulations that guide officers’ conduct. Simply by sticking to the “stupid rules”, Patrick Lynch suggested, cops could fight back against their “enemies”.

Tens of millions of people made New Year’s resolutions last week, but few were as creative as the one pushed through Congress yesterday. Apparently, the new Congress decided that its first order of business should be to go after workers who are no longer able to hold jobs due to injury or illness.

It did this in a technical move that is likely to escape the attention of most of the public. The Republican Congress voted to ban any reallocation of Social Security tax revenue between the retirement fund, designated for retirees and survivors, and the disability fund for disabled workers. This matters because the disability fund is projected to face a shortfall some time in 2016. If no steps are taken by that point, workers suffering from cancer, heart disease or other disabling conditions will see their benefits cut by almost 20 percent.

The easiest way to have addressed this problem would be to simply reallocate money between the funds, as has been done eleven times in the past. But the Republican Congress apparently felt that it would be better to hold disabled workers hostage in order to extract concessions on this or other programs.

Raúl M Grijalva: Why are Republicans so obsessed with their Keystone pipe dream? For 35 jobs?

The 114th Congress is officially underway, and in a move that speaks volumes about the Republican leadership’s agenda, the first order of business in the House and Senate is rubber-stamping the Keystone XL pipeline. The GOP is doing a big favor for Canadian oil interests by trampling the long-established process for making these important environmental decisions. In return, Americans get sharply increased risks to our climate and water quality. [..]

Building a pipeline that cuts clear across the country so a Canadian corporation can export dirty tar sands to the highest bidder is not in our national interest. We have an established process for approving these projects. That process has not yet concluded, so Republicans are trying to circumvent it. The question is why.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Time to Get Real on Jobs, Wages, and Growth

There’s been a lot of economic recovery talk lately, but most people will probably tell you that things still aren’t that great. Most Americans — 99 percent of them or so — are still struggling. Economic inequality is soaring, social mobility is declining, earnings at most income levels are stagnant or falling, and the percentage of working-age Americans who are actually working is at a record low.

And yet, as Republicans take control of the Senate and consolidate their lock on the House, they’re preparing to double down on the same policies that created this mess in the first place: austerity, taxation and deregulation.

How will Democrats respond? The economy has improved somewhat, but in an uneven and unstable way that has primarily benefited the wealthy. (And now the GOP’s even trying to take credit for that.) How will the Republicans’ opponents distinguish themselves: with clear and concrete ideas and proposals, or vague platitudes?

Robert Reich: Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is a Pending Disaster

Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point to the administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the TPP would be a disaster.

If you haven’t heard much about the TPP, that’s part of the problem right there. It would be the largest trade deal in history – involving countries stretching from Chile to Japan, representing 792 million people and accounting for 40 percent of the world economy – yet it’s been devised in secret.

Lobbyists from America’s biggest corporations and Wall Street’s biggest banks have been involved but not the American public. That’s a recipe for fatter profits and bigger paychecks at the top, but not a good deal for most of us, or even for most of the rest of the world.

Too many police leaders and politicians have responded to the recent tragic double murder of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos by blaming Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio, and peaceful police brutality protestors. At the same time, they refuse to acknowledge, let alone condemn, the police violence and brutality that have claimed the lives of countless people, including Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

This New Year’s, a good resolution for these professional pugilists would be to learn from the very families who have lost their loved ones to police brutality. The families of Michael Brown and, Eric Garner, in particular, would be good to study. While grieving their own losses, they have been able to extend condolences and sympathy to the grieving families of officers Lui and Ramos. And they have condemned violence in any form.  [..]

The double police murder of December 20 requires no fancy detective work to get to the obvious facts. Ismaaiyl Brinsley wasn’t from New York, wasn’t part of the Black Lives Matter movement (anti-violent from the start), had shot his girlfriend earlier in the day, and had a history of mental illness which included suicide attempts.

Winonah Hauter: For the Planet and Future Generations, New Congress May Be Most Dangerous Yet

The swearing-in of the 114th Congress this week spells trouble for our food, water and environment, and for all those who seek to champion healthy, safe communities for our families. We may be looking at the most hostile Congress ever in terms of protecting the environment.

Here are a few examples of what we could face over the next few years:

James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a notorious climate change denier and an unabashed champion for the fossil fuel industry, will likely chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Expect the committee to intensify its bullying of environmentalists, especially in light of the game-changing decision by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking.

We’ll also see attacks on the credibility of groups that do environmental work – in fact, we already have, and it will only get worse.

Lauren Carlsen: Obama Has Nothing to Gain by Propping Up Mexico’s Government

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is traveling to Washington, seeking to bolster his support in the United States as it rapidly unravels in his own country. But President Barack Obama has much to lose by propping up the faltering Mexican leader. [..]

If Obama gives Peña Nieto the expected pat on the back, it will be a stab in the back to the Mexican movement for justice and transparency. Obama and Congress should instead announce their full support for a thorough investigation of the disappearances and the suspension of all police and military aid to Mexico. Congress must also immediately stop funding Plan Mexico – the drug war aid package formally known as the Merida Initiative that has appropriated about $2.4 billion to Mexico – and look closely and responsibly at what U.S. aid to Mexican security forces is actually supporting: namely, human rights abuses.

Our government should respect our own stated principles and laws on human rights and democracy, as well as Mexicans’ efforts to save their nation from the abyss into which it’s fallen.

President Obama must no longer lend U.S. political and economic support to an authoritarian system in crisis.

Nozomi Hayase: The Battle of Our Time: Breaking the Spell of the Corporate State

In late 2010, political activist John Perry Barlow tweeted: “The first serious info-war is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.” In the last four years, new insurgencies have arisen from cyberspace to participate in the battle against government corruption and secrecy. From Snowden’s disclosure of NSA mass surveillance to the release of the CIA torture report evidencing war crimes and murder of innocent people, a crisis of legitimacy and moral depravity of authority are becoming increasingly undeniable. All of this reveals an invisible force of governance working to control the thought and perceptions of the greater population for nefarious ends.

In his 2006 seminal writing “Conspiracy as Governance,” WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange noted how the secrecy regime works as “a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls…” As was seen in the recent secret economic treaties like TPP and TISA exposed by WikiLeaks, systems of national governance have evolved into a global network that undermines the sovereignty of countries and the rights of people and puts corporate profit above all else.

Wedded bliss is becoming an elite privilege

Add marriage to the growing list of victims of government policies that favor the rich at the expense of everyone else. Marriage is becoming less common down the income ladder and more common and durable among the prosperous, analysis of marriage, divorce and other records shows.

Social conservatives say marriage makes for economically sound families, but the empirical evidence shows that, on the contrary, steady incomes and jobs make for sound marriages. Job stability benefits both employers through greater productivity and families through more cohesion.

Marriage inequality also affects children. Prosperous parents lavish investments of time and money for enrichment classes and social activities on their offspring, while poor parents struggle just to pay the rent at the expense of interacting with their children as budgets for preschoolers and child-development programs take hit after hit.

Eugene Robinson: Time for the GOP to Pitch In

With Republican majorities in both houses, the new Congress should begin by focusing on traditional GOP priorities: improving the nation’s sagging infrastructure, reforming an unwieldy tax code and finding ways to boost middle-class opportunity.

When pigs fly, you say? Skepticism is definitely in order. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have a fundamental choice to make. They can acknowledge the obvious areas of common ground they share with President Obama-thus showing that the Republican Party can participate responsibly in government-or they can throw temper tantrums. [..]

It is perhaps inevitable that the GOP will use its control of Congress to highlight the party’s pet issues-advocacy for the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, and opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Every once in a while, Republicans may even muster the needed 60 votes in the Senate-and force Obama to use his veto. But then what? Passing a bunch of bills that have no chance of ever becoming law is not the best advertisement for effectiveness.

McConnell told the Post he wants voters to see his party as a “responsible, right-of-center, governing majority.” Well, two obvious things such a majority should be doing right now are celebrating the economic recovery and looking for ways to ensure that more of its benefits reach the middle class.

Joe Nocera: The Moral of the Kulluk

The cover story of The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, “The Wreck of the Kulluk,” by McKenzie Funk, is one of those articles that you can’t put down even though you know how it turns out. The Kulluk was an offshore exploratory drilling rig, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, which, in December 2012, ran aground in some of the most inhospitable waters in the world. [..]

As regular readers know, I am hardly opposed to drilling for oil or gas. Yet this particular high-risk venture seems both foolish and unnecessary. For one thing, the world is awash in oil, thanks to a slowdown in demand and increase in supply because of the fracking revolution. For another, the price of oil is so low as to make new, expensive exploration in the Arctic unprofitable.

Most of all, though, we’re just not ready to drill for this oil. As LeVine put it, “I don’t believe we have the technological capability to extract these resources safely.” To me, that is the real moral of the story of the Kulluk.

Adam Lee: If peace on earth is our goal, atheism might be the means to that end

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still.

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before. [..]

Of course, not every atheist is peaceful and not every religious person is violent. Avowedly pacifist faiths like the Quakers or Unitarian Universalists have played an important role in peace movements and, in the other direction, there are lamentably prominent atheists like Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchens who’ve been entirely too cavalier about imperialism and military aggression. But in general, the trend is that, as the world becomes less religious, we can expect it to become even more peaceful.

The War Machine is the violent nexus of military and economic forces that grinds us up to perpetuate itself. With politicians of all stripes in its pockets and buoyed by lobbyists, the War Machine is beyond the reach of civil government and easily tramples individual souls, especially when they inhabit bodies of color. War is a big, multi-trillion-dollar business, requiring the sales, construction and operation of guns, drones, missiles, governmental armies, private armies, public prisons, private prisons and the like.

While the War Machine has been operated most obviously overseas in places like the Middle East, and domestically behind bars, it is now increasingly clear that the War Machine is also operating on America’s streets.

The War Machine has always made for strange bedfellows. Even as the conflict in Afghanistan, America’s longest foreign war, ostensibly ends, America’s largest police department and its union are in sometimes open conflict against their civilian commander, supported by a right wing that normally hates public unions.

Jared Bernstein: Ed Kleinbard Calls Out ‘Dynamic Scoring’

There are many strong, substantive reasons to be worried about the use of “dynamic scoring” by the new Republican Congress. As Ed Kleinbard tells it in Saturday’s NYT, the new majority is instructing the official scorekeepers of the revenue implications of tax changes to employ models that incorporate macroeconomic feedback.

As I argued here, such a move engenders at least two big concerns. First, there’s the uncertainty of the estimates, providing a plum opportunity for cherry picking: [..]

Or, as Ed puts it, dynamic scoring provides us with “…greater exposure to the risk of a political thumb on the scale.”

The second problem, well covered by Ed, is that the R’s obviously hope that dynamic scoring will provide them the cover they need to cut taxes in ways that the current scoring approach will not (though I should note here that David Wessel disagrees – he doesn’t think these scores will differ enough from current methods to provide such cover; I’m with Ed on this). That leads to larger budget deficits and since tax increases are off the table with this crowd, that means greater pressure on the spending side of the budget.

Norman Solomon: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case — while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book “State of War.”

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling — who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act — is no less deserving of support.

Revelations from brave whistleblowers are essential for the informed consent of the governed. With its hostilities, the Obama Justice Department is waging legalistic war on our democratic rights to know substantially more about government actions than official stories. That’s why the imminent courtroom clash in the case of “United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling” is so important.

Les Keopold: The Eight Ugly Scars of Runaway Inequality

America is the richest country in all of history. We have the largest economy and the largest number of millionaires and billionaires. At the same time, however, we lead the developed world in economic inequality. In 1965, CEOs received $20 for every dollar earned by the average worker. Today the gap is $354 to $1.  [..]

These are more than cold statistics. They also tell the story of a nation in serious trouble. Runaway equality is lacerating the fabric of our society. [..]

The powerful will never be persuaded by intellectual arguments from even the very best economists. Instead, history shows it will take countervailing power and a virtual uprising by the rest of us. For a short time, Occupy Wall Street focused the national debate on economic inequality. It will take a massive new movement for economic justice with staying power to remove the ugly scars of runaway inequality.

In this new year, let’s hope we gain the courage to build it.

It has been just over 50 years since U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released the groundbreaking report, “Smoking and Health.” The report concluded, “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.” The tobacco industry intensified its campaign to defend smoking, funding bogus groups and junk science. Now, a similar war on the truth is being waged by the fossil-fuel industry to deny the science of climate change.

“Doubt is our product,” states a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Brown and Williamson was a member of “Big Tobacco,” along with Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Company, U.S. Tobacco, Liggett Group, and American Tobacco. In 1994, the CEOs of these seven companies lied before Congress, claiming that nicotine was not addictive-even though secret research conducted by their corporations proved they knew otherwise. The image of the seven executives with their right hands in the air, swearing an oath to tell the truth, became an iconic image of a deceitful, deadly industry.

Joe Conason: GOP, Stop Making Excuses for Scalise

The unsavory story of Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican and House majority whip, should serve as a clear warning to the leaders of the Republican Party. They need to ask why their message attracts some of the most despicable elements in American society-and why they can’t effectively reject those extremists.

Despite many fervent vows of “outreach” and “inclusion” by top Republicans, they keep making the wrong choices. Both House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have expressed their confidence in Scalise despite his “mistake.” And the excuses they now offer on behalf of the man chosen for the third-highest position in their congressional caucus are rapidly eroding.

Michael Brenner: Know When to Fold ‘Em

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms. [..]

Barack Obama reportedly takes pride in his skill as a card player. Poker is the prime game of politics and politicians. The president’s record suggests that he is something less than its master. The list of those who have fleeced him is a long and varied one. It includes: the Republican Congressional leadership (habitually); the Wall Street barons; Big Pharma; the Intelligence chiefs; Robert Gates; David Petraeus; Leon Panetta; Bibi Netanyahu (numerous occasions); King Abdullah (Saudi Arabia); Hamid Karzai; General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; Recep Tayyip Erdogan; and Bashar Assad. Indeed, there is only one group of players whom he beats regularly — the “liberals” whose gambling instincts have been honed in endless games of rainy-day Scrabble.

So, some advice on how to raise his game is in order. The popular country-and-western ballad The Gambler can serve as a rich source of pithy poker axioms.