The public trusts Obama more than it trusts Congress on health care. Obama's best hope — probably his only hope — of providing some sort of relief will be to wrest control of this process from congressional Democrats after Labor Day by finally putting forth his own specific plan.
But what about the Republican protesters who are grabbing headlines and TV time?
Bear this in mind: the crowds of white Middle Americans disrupting public meetings across the nation are the same crowds — about 20 percent of the electorate — that believe the filthy lie that Obama's presidency is illegitimate because he was foreign-born (they're wrong).
Rooted in the Regan and Bush philosophy that holds "If it's not Republican it must be illegal," these people are only several steps removed from the Nazi-era brown shirts that birthed fascism in Germany. This mob will not be happy with anything less than white, Christian authoritarianism.
Obama's election was a repudiation of their putrid vision. And there is nothing in the polls to suggest that they are anything but a hate-filled minority.
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Taxis are an under-appreciated and often little-considered component in urban mass-transit systems. They fill the gaps left by the MBTA and offer a sort of curb-to-curb, citywide Zipcar service.
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On Tuesday, President Barack Obama signed the new health-care bill into law.
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As secretary of defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara prosecuted the Vietnam War on a day-to-day basis, just as Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for George W. Bush.
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- Taking the long view
The surprising and dramatic death in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden at the hands of American Special Forces operating under shoot-to-kill orders from President Barack Obama was a triumph of singular rarity in the annals of international conflict.
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To make sense of this bizarre and dispiriting moment in American politics, here are the things one needs to appreciate.
- The debt crisis is only on hold
The United States was only hours away from joining in the international community of deadbeats and bunko artists — think Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal — when President Barack Obama signed the legislation raising the national debt ceiling and cutting trillions of dollars in federal spending.
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