Tag Archive for: President Obama

A Generous View of President Obama from Canada

/0 Comments/in , /by

Twitter pal @NerdyWonka shared this, a pithy letter to the editor that was published in the Detroit Free Press, from Canadian Richard Brunt about President Obama, Americans, and Canada. Now picked up by other media like the Christian Science Monitor and the website Addicting Info, in only 175 words Brunt summarizes some of the accomplishments of the Obama administration and expresses astonishment at the disgruntlement of American voters with his presidency. As a measure of its virality, note below that Nerdy Wonka’s tweet including a photocopy of the letter has been retweeted more than 8,000 times, after it was earlier shared by a Canadian with the Twitter handle @RickStrandlof, whose message has itself been shared more than 1,000 times. I made a screenshot of NerdyWonka’s tweet, including some of the excellent comments below it. A transcript of the letter is just below.

@NerdyWonka

Richard Brunt’s Letter to the Editor:

Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections. Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country’s adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there’s no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money.

America is leading the world once again and respected internationally — in sharp contrast to the Bush years. Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden.

So, Americans vote for the party that got you into the mess that Obama just dug you out of? This defies reason.

When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?

Richard Brunt

Victoria, British Columbia

Read more

A Useful Delay on Keystone XL Shows What Little Leverage PM Harper has with President Obama

/0 Comments/in , /by

As the LA Times reports this afternoon, ongoing litigation that is challenging the proposed Keystone XL pipeline over the probable effects it would have on a key aquifer in Nebraska will create a delay of several additional months in the Obama administration’s deliberations on the Alberta-Texas pipeline, pushing a decision until after the US’s mid-term elections next November. That’s helpful politically to the president and DEMs for several reasons covered in the story, but there’s an additional effect I don’t mind at all: it shows that ham-handed nudging of the president by Canadian Prime Minister Harper and his ministers, which in one notorious instance slandered environmental groups in Canada and the USA, and efforts mounted by companies like TransCanada, haven’t amounted to much in the way of effective pressure on the administration. If anything, it makes Harper look weak in regard to oil policy, supposedly his strength. That, plus significant challenges to the pipelines out west, including from First Nations Canadians, should set Harper back on his heels, even as the 2015 Canadian federal election nears.

I’m pleased as an American who follows Canadian politics, and as someone hoping to see the Alberta tar sands–with their high cost to the environment, and whose end product would burn with high emissions–stay in the ground. I’m also pleased that it displeases PM Harper and the drill-baby-drill crowd in the US, frustrating their zeal to exercise rapacity toward natural resources and the environment.

Read more