Democrats Air Frustrations with Obama 'Cockiness'
President Obama's competitive, boastful nature and condescending advice rubs even loyal Democrats the wrong way, a new profile alleges.
The New York Times' Jodi Kantor airs complaints from "loyal" Obama associates -- not as a buried lede but explicitly in her introduction:He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.The article reports Obama's associates characterize this bluster and political zeal as "cockiness." Further, Washington Democrats say he is all too eager to offer unsolicited advice -- on handshakes, writing, and parenting, among other topics.
For those activities at which he feels inadequate, Obama reportedly dedicates considerable time to practice, no matter how trivial the pastime:
He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).Kantor's piece carries a long-running theme that Obama easily -- perhaps even uncontrollably -- rates and ranks others around him. A 2008 debate gaffe found him flippantly calling Hillary Clinton "likable enough." Of Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, he asserted, "We're the Miami Heat, and he's Jeremy Lin." Even his own staff are subject to criticism:
His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”Despite a strong push to negatively define Mitt Romney, Obama finds himself neck and neck with the Republican presidential candidate two months before the election -- even falling behind in some polls. As the November ballot draws nearer, he will need to rely heavily on his personal likability to draw independent voters. The New York Times and allied Democrats airing these grievances, which may reinforce Republicans' charges against Obama as vain and out of touch, is a serious problem for the embattled incumbent.
INVEST IN BANCO SOCIAL...UP TO $10K at 15% YEARLY...GUARANTEED!
Podemos cambiar el rumbo de Estados Unidos
Al entrar en la recta final de la contienda presidencial, los americanos se van a enfrentar a una decisión importantísima. El pueblo americano decidirá la dirección del gobierno y el papel del mismo en sus vidas en años venideros.
El debate de esta semana en Tampa planteó una serie de temas, incluido el conservar el sueño americano de trabajar duro para alcanzar el éxito. La Fundación Heritage tiene extensas investigaciones y propuestas de normativa sobre cada uno de estos asuntos:
Energía: Estados Unidos necesita acabar con los subsidios a la energía y restablecer el libre mercado en el sector energético. Podemos y deberíamos desarrollar nuestras fuentes de energía nacionales de un modo responsable con el medio ambiente.
Opción escolar: El centro de la educación en Estados Unidos debería ser nuestros estudiantes. El mejor modo de servir a las necesidades de una población diversa es darles a las familias la libertad para elegir la escuela (pública, privada, concertada o en el hogar) que mejor se ajuste a las necesidades de sus hijos.
Libre comercio: Estados Unidos necesita empleos y fomentar el libre comercio es una manera excelente de crear empleos de alta calidad en Estados Unidos. Deberíamos tener un flujo libre de bienes, servicios e inversiones entre las naciones democráticas. Póngase al día del historial de libre comercio de Estados Unidos.
Presupuesto federal: Atajar el presupuesto federal es una tarea compleja, pero se deber hacer. El plan Para Salvar el Sueño Americano de la Fundación Heritage detalla las ideas para reformar los principales programas de derechos a beneficios, balancear permanentemente el presupuesto y reducir la deuda nacional. READ MORE
NECESITA ASISTENCIA ECONOMICA TEMPORAL? BANCO SOCIAL...Un Verdadero Banco
How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study
- Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station A1700, Austin, TX 78712-0118, United States
Abstract
The
New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection
project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American
young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family
arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the
young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic
relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational
outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types.
The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between
the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with
still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. The results are
typically robust in multivariate contexts as well, suggesting far
greater diversity in lesbian-parent household experiences than
convenience-sample studies of lesbian families have revealed. The NFSS
proves to be an illuminating, versatile dataset that can assist family
scholars in understanding the long reach of family structure and
transitions.
Highlights
►
The New Family Structures Study collected data from nearly 3000 adults.
► I compare young adults who grew up with a lesbian mother or gay
father. ► Differences exist between children of parents who have had
same-sex relationships and those with married parents. ► This
probability study suggests considerable diversity among same-sex
parents.
Keywords
- Same-sex parenting;
- Family structure;
- Young adulthood;
- Sampling concerns
1. Introduction
The
well-being of children has long been in the center of public policy
debates about marriage and family matters in the United States. That
trend continues as state legislatures, voters, and the judiciary
considers the legal boundaries of marriage. Social science data remains
one of the few sources of information useful in legal debates
surrounding marriage and adoption rights, and has been valued both by
same-sex marriage supporters and opponents. Underneath the politics
about marriage and child development are concerns about family
structures’ possible effects on children: the number of parents present
and active in children’s lives, their genetic relationship to the
children, parents’ marital status, their gender distinctions or
similarities, and the number of transitions in household composition. In
this introduction to the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), I compare
how young adults from a variety of different family backgrounds fare on
40 different social, emotional, and relational outcomes. In particular, I
focus on how respondents who said their mother had a same-sex
relationship with another woman—or their father did so with another
man—compare with still-intact, two-parent heterosexual married families
using nationally-representative data collected from a large probability
sample of American young adults. CONTINUE
