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“... As Barack Obama never tires of saying, America is a country where ‘ordinary people can do extraordinary things.’ In January 2006, Neil Entwistle, a seemingly ordinary 27-year-old Englishman with an honours degree from the University of York, who had been living in the US for barely four months, shot dead his American wife, Rachel, and their baby daughter, Lillian, with a long-barrelled Colt ...”

“... Europeans fell in love with Obama even before he became president. At the same time we are hardly aware of who our new president is, the president of the EU. The feelings aren’t reciprocal, are they? Enthusiasm for Barack Obama in the US was initially huge, but it had a very domestic dynamic, it was a story about how America could elect a black person only 150 years after slavery, 40 after segregation ended ...”

“... and developed into a near insurrection. The Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged during the Obama presidency, succeeded in drawing attention to police violence against black people, but the protests against the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray were mostly confined to the cities in which the deaths had occurred. ...”

“... isn’t set to become secretary of state, his book seems to be on the Democrats’ reading list: Barack Obama has been seen carrying a well-thumbed copy. The Post-American World belongs to a genre of high-class briefing material which cannot ever question certain basic assumptions about American power; only a brisk comparison between India and the US in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”