“... On the final night of the relentless presidential primary campaign, Jesse Jackson compared Barack Obama’s victory to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Erica Jong compared Hillary Clinton’s defeat to watching Joan of Arc burning at the stake. Obama was in St Paul, Minnesota, pointedly in the very arena where the Republicans will hold their convention in September, at times barely audible over the nearly continual cheering of 17,000 fans (with another 15,000 listening outside ...”

“... abortion, but he has taken a liberal position on the immigration debate and has teamed up with Barack Obama and George Clooney to raise awareness of the violence in Darfur. According to Hedges, we may be only one cataclysmic event away from a total reordering of American politics and a takeover by the theocrats. Many of the Christian conservatives I ...”

“... is supposed to have paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed that had been slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama), which the Russians apparently documented in order to possess useful kompromat (compromising material). It explains that two separate sources have attested to a long-term Russian plan to support ...”

“... back to Afghanistan; by then, the Taliban were back with a vengeance. Since the election of Barack Obama they have become even stronger, despite last year’s surge. Much has been said about Afghan corruption, and with justification, but many were aggrieved when David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in the country, said that corruption had ...”

“... and the surrounding lowlands. (The many hundreds of coal ash basins in the US were regulated under Obama and have been deregulated under Trump. Coal ash, the residue from burning coal, contains lead, mercury, selenium, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and boron, and is known to lead to cancer, neurological conditions and reproductive problems in humans, and bizarre ...”

“... a political trap for the president of the United States.’† That president was, of course, Barack Obama, whom Netanyahu famously loathed (the feeling was mutual). Netanyahu lobbied furiously against Obama’s efforts to reach a peaceful agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme, most notably in his bellicose ...”

“... Wall Street Journal imagining and urging ‘A World Free of Nuclear Weapons’. Not so long ago, Barack Obama promised an effort to realise that goal, and the UN Security Council endorsed the idea. That’s the good news. The bad news is that while the risk of a world-ending nuclear exchange has probably diminished, the risk of some form of ...”

“... that the current epidemic can be stopped, but no one knows when or how it will be reined in. As Barack Obama said, speaking at a special session of the United Nations, ‘Do not stand by, thinking that somehow, because of what we’ve done, that it’s taken care of. It’s not.’ Preventing the next eruption is an even more distant goal. As of 1 ...”

“... last Labour government’s measures included a cut in VAT in late 2008, albeit for just a year. Barack Obama managed to enact a package of measures which included higher government spending as well as lower taxes, and even Germany undertook a fiscal stimulus package in 2009. The normally austere IMF agreed that fiscal stimulus was the way to go in ...”

“... Money, Money’, said America was the ‘laughing stock of the world’, questioned where Barack Obama was born and hinted he might run for president. ‘I am well acquainted with winning,’ he said. ‘We will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us.’ Trump appeared again in 2023, during his ...”

“... clear poll-leader off his stride, the presidential contests have seen John McCain failing to dent Barack Obama’s increasing lead in the polls, a lead that probably owes more to the economic crisis than his performance on TV. The most compelling contest so far has been the one between the vice-presidential candidates. Watched by nearly 20 million more ...”

“... imposes dilemmas that are avoidable only through delusion. One of its most influential backers, Barack Obama, once said that racial affirmative action programmes, ‘when properly structured, can open up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities without diminishing opportunities for white students’. But how is that possible? If ...”

“... loathing of McCain has not abated with the senator’s death, nor has his daily preoccupation with Obama and Hillary Clinton, long past the election.*On an unannounced visit to the Korean demilitarised zone, including a few steps into North Korean territory itself with Kim Jong-un, the president brings along one of his favourite Fox News hosts, Tucker ...”

“... at all. The jacket of this paperback reprint of The Irony of American History carries a comment by Barack Obama which attempts a summary of Niebuhr: ‘There’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things.’ That is a fair digest considering that it was extracted by a ...”

“... of rhetorical analysis go back directly to Aristotle and Cicero (it’s common to point out that Barack Obama, or his speech writers, have learned their best tricks from Cicero). And so far as the House of Commons is concerned, those 19th-century gentlemen who devised, or enshrined, most of the parliamentary rules and procedures that we are now familiar ...”