Progress Report

End Of year 8 Months Report

The biggest speech of the year happened this week and no I'm not talking Kanye and Taylor! I'm thinking more along the lines of the whole joint meeting of the houses thing that Obamarama has been up to. In this early part of his term Obama has had to face many trials including the economy, healthcare reform and an internationally mortifying climate change policy. No wonder all the assessments of his first year have....hang on! Obama is only 8 months into his first year! Why on earth are pundits assessing his first year now?! Well I believe it is because of two vital things:

1. Timing
2. The political stance of your given critic journalist

First off is the obvious issue of timing. Obama is facing his biggest challenge yet, with healthcare not only dividing the houses, but his own party too. Cries of socialist can be heard almost every day (if you're a Brit this would be the moment to point out that accusing someone of being a socialist in the U.S. is probably worse than being a Fascist). Following huge compromise on both the economy and climate change bills (huge if you're a politician anyways) many Obamarites believe he should stand firm on healthcare. However, accusations from the conservative part of his liberal party (confusing I know) claim his policies will fail because they are too similar to our, obviously terrible, NHS. This leads me onto the journalists themselves. If you are at all Republican you will have published your obituary of Obama's first year at least two weeks ago now (and yes I mean obituary). If you're leaning the conservative way then you will have published a cautionary - to Obama - progress report in the past week. And everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon right about now.

The issue with all of this is that when it actually is the end of Obama's first year they'll all be running dry on fresh ammo. But that doesn't really matter as I am of the opinion the Right is gambling on the fact that Obama's position may well have improved by the end of the year. Which means that the journo's are, indeed, kicking a man when he's down. So worthy! So noble!

As for the notoriously liberal Rolling Stone's August issue? Quite frankly it's just pretty.