” A friend sends along an email attachment—a handwritten letter by his 8-year-old son, Peter. It’s addressed to First Lady Michelle Obama. “It all started because he saw something about school lunches [and] how ketchup is bad for you, and that Michelle Obama wants to limit the amount of ketchup” in schools, my friend explained. When the boy’s mother reminded him he attends a private school, making the ketchup rationing a nonissue, “He said something about wanting to ‘give a voice to the voiceless.’”
But ketchup is actually the least of the boy’s concerns, as he then continues onto foreign policy, the crisis in the Middle East, and the need for boots on the ground. (“He also disipionted millons of Americans by not bombing Syria.”) In addition, Peter recommends that the president urge the United Nations to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.”
” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has jabbed President Barack Obama with a stinging remark that although Israel and the United States are friends, fears of Iran and the ISIS have forged a “new partnership” of Israel and “many of our Arab neighbors.”
Netanyahu took the opportunity of being charged with the responsibility to form a new government to say:
We very much appreciate, and will take care to preserve, our alliance with the best of our friends, the United States; however, we will continue to work to prevent the agreement with Iran, an agreement that endangers us, our neighbors and the world. We see eye to eye with many of our Arab neighbors regarding the danger posed by Iran and we also view positively the benefit that this new partnership could have for the region.
The chaos in Yemen has once again embarrassed the Obama administration by exposing another colossal foreign policy failure that has made President Obama increasingly isolated in the region.”
This article from today’s Jewish Press amply demonstrates that our “Dear Leader” sides , not with all Muslims , but only with the extremist factions … Iran , Palestinian terror groups and jihadists , while Israel forges alliances with the more moderate Muslims of the mideast in the interests of self-preservation.
One side seeks only to be left in peace while the other works ceaselessly towards a Global Caliphate with the active collusion of our “commander-in-chief” …President “Peace Prize” , who claims to seek peace in the middle east is in actuality ensuring , whether by incompetence or design , that war is coming ala Neville Chamberlain .
” First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.
He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our allies, appeases tyrants, coddles adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.
Now he’s coming for Israel.
Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet? “
This is amazing. These people are amazing. Greg Gutfeld summed this up perfectly; he said it would be like France sending some mimes to Boston after the marathon bombing.”
” The Republicans in Congress hold significant leads over the Democrats on four of the six issues that U.S. registered voters say are most important in determining how they will vote in November: the economy, the way the federal government is working, the situation with Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, and the federal budget deficit. Democrats, by contrast, top their Republican rivals on just one of the six: “equal pay for women.”
These results are from a Sept. 25-30 poll in which Gallup asked registered voters to rate the importance of 13 issues to their vote for Congress, and then to indicate which party would do a better job on each issue. The accompanying graph simultaneously displays the rankings of these issues on both dimensions. The higher an issue is, the greater the Republican Party’s advantage. And the farther to the right an issue is, the more important it is to the electorate.
The 13 issues measured in the new poll include eight that appeared in a Gallup Poll conducted in April, before the midterm campaign season came into full bloom, plus five new ones. In total, six issues were rated above the average of 69%, in terms of the percentage of voters saying they are extremely or very important to their vote:
the economy (88%)
the availability of good jobs (86%)
the way the federal government is working (81%)
the situation with Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria (78%)
equal pay for women (75%) and
the federal budget deficit (73%)
On the No. 1 issue, the economy, Republicans have more than doubled their April lead over Democrats, to 11 percentage points. “
” Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer lashed out at National Security adviser Susan Rice following her seemingly premature announcement that the U.S. had reached an agreement with Turkey over using territory to train troops to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Krauthammer told “Special Report” host Bret Baier, after airing Rice’s comments on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, that the adviser’s proclamation, coupled with the Turks denial, is a “huge embarrassment” and “unbelievable.” The conservative commentator also blamed President Barack Obama for this failure to reach an agreement, wondering why the Turks would join a war “where the leader of the coalition is not serious.” “
” September 15, 2014 – Jon Stewart spent the first part of Monday night’s Daily Show trying to sort through the confusion and mixed messaging being sent by the Obama administration on exactly what strategy they’re using (and what we should be calling it) to fight ISIS. Stewart first rounded up complaints from the “coalition of the kvetching” over Obama’s strategy before getting to the fight over semantics on whether the U.S. is at war. Stewart also found it funny that Obama is justifying ISIS action with the 2001 AUMF he actually wanted repealed, which is why he’s so “lucky that Congress never does anything you ask.”
Stewart concluded by pointing out a key difference between the Obama and Bush administrations: the Bush administration was “incredibly disciplined and focused” in doing the wrong thing, while the Obama administration is doing the right thing, but couldn’t be more “chaotic and confused” about it.”
” … it’s not my job to rate the obama administrations actions in iraq. but i will tell you that after 2011 the administration basically ignored the country. and when officials spoke about what was happening there they were often ignorant of the reality. they did not want to see what was really happening because it conflicted with their narrative that they left iraq in reasonably good shape. In 2012 as violence was escalating i wrote a story, citing UN statistics, that showed how civilian deaths from attacks were rising. Tony Blinken, who was then Biden’s national security guy and a top iraq official, pushed back, even wrote a letter to the editor, saying that violence was near historic lows. that was not true. even after falluja fell to ISIS at the end of last year, the administration would push back on stories about maliki’s sectarian tendencies, saying they didn’t see it that way. so there was a concerted effort by the administration to not acknowledge the obvious until it became so apparent — with the fall of mosul — that iraq was collapsing. “
” Is “ignorant” really the best word to describe willful blindness to a politically inconvenient truth? Obama got elected promising to bring the troops home; the only way he could do that without major domestic headaches was to claim that Iraq didn’t need them anymore. So he did, the truth notwithstanding. Imagine how many low-information voters will watch tonight’s speech and wonder where this bolt-from-the-blue known as ISIS came from. Last they heard, Iraq was doing just fine.
You guys know better, though. I’ve linked it more than once before but it’s worth re-reading Peter Beinart’s post from a few months ago about Obama’s history of malign neglect in Iraq. He had one Iraq goal as president — to get out, come what may, just as he promised voters he would do in 2008. ”
” The definition of a maximalist is a “person who holds extreme views and is not prepared to compromise.” Although he accuses others of being maximalist saboteurs, there is no one who holds more “extreme views,” or is less “prepared to compromise” than Barack Obama.
In an interview with a supporter and defender of progressive-style overreaching government Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, in a piece entitled “Obama on the World,” self-proclaimed moderate Barack Obama talked of Iraq, Putin, and Israel.
The president used the unrest in the Middle East to describe the state of American politics in the following way:
We have so many things going for us right now as a country — from new energy resources to innovation to a growing economy — but we will never realize our full potential unless our two parties adopt the same outlook that we’re asking of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds or Israelis and Palestinians: No victor, no vanquished and work together.
Obama did not elaborate on whom, in America’s political system, he likens to ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas, so one can only guess.
According to Barack Obama, “societies don’t work if political factions take maximalist positions.” The president said, “At the end of the day… the biggest threat to America — the only force that can really weaken us — is us.” Naturally, that “us” does not include the one issuing the warning.“
” Article at: http://www.westernfreepress.com/?p=24… Judge Jeanine Pirro cycles through 5 major crises raging on the President’s watch while, she claims, he “dithers”. Comparing Barack Obama’s responses to those of Ronald Reagan’s, she calls on the President to get engaged and show us some leadership! From Fox News’ “Justice with Judge Jeanine”, July 19, 2014 “
” According to multiple reliable sources, on Air Force One during President Barack Obama’s recent Asia trip, he spent some time talking with his traveling press corps about his approach to foreign policy. He was defensive and, by one account, “fuming.” He felt that the criticism of his approach was unfair. He had clear ideas about how to manage America’s global interests. In his own words, they centered on a single concept: “Don’t do stupid shit.”
In fact, after making this point, he reportedly stood up, headed forward toward his own cabin on the plane, and then stopped. He turned back to the gathered reporters, and, much like an elementary school teacher hammering rote learning into students, he said, “So what is my foreign policy?” The reporters, in unison, then said, “Don’t do stupid shit.”
How far we have come from the audacity of hope; yes, we can; the soaring expectations framed by the brilliant oratory of the president’s Cairo speech on relations with the Muslim world; his Prague speech on eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide; and his Oslo speech when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, “don’t do stupid shit” is a comedown even from his expectation-lowering remarks in the Philippines on that same Asia trip in which he limned his vision for a foreign policy that consisted mostly of “singles” and “doubles.“
Having reported that “Don’t do stupid shit” was Obama’s personal mantra in regards to his foreign policy approach , author David Rothkopf then proceeds to explore whether Obama actually lives by his self-assigned credo …
” It is, of course, the prerogative of the president of the United States to make and frame his foreign policy as he sees fit. It is among the executive’s most clearly defined and potent responsibilities as described in the U.S. Constitution. So rather than getting into a lengthy discussion about how disappointing it is for this president — who once was seen as a potentially transformational figure — to have embraced defensive minimalism, or dwelling on the lack of imagination that has led to America’s incredible shrinking foreign policy, let’s take Obama’s foreign policy on its own terms.
Let’s ask the question: Is this administration succeeding in its goal of not doing stupid shit?“
Mr Rothkopf first ponders the age-old democrat habit of parsing the most basic of english language words , a la Bill Clinton … what is the meaning of “is” , “stupid” and finally “shit” .
” This all depends, as another president might have said, on what your definition is of “stupid” and of “shit.” But mostly it depends on your definition of the word “doing.” Because if doing stupid shit actually requires taking an action that crosses the administration’s stupidity threshold, then it would rule out all the times when not doing something was stupid. While this might be a clever way to dodge the bullet for an administration that is often criticized for its reluctance to act, this falls into the same kind of minor league Talmudic semantic contortionism that led the aforementioned prior president to parse the meaning of the word “is.” “
After vowing to stick with the more mundane and socially accepted meanings of those three simple words the author gets down to cases and finds , not surprisingly , Obama wanting …
” In terms of sins of commission, there is nonetheless a list of some doozies that seem to violate Obama’s own new foreign-policy guidelines. “
Read the whole litany of foreign policy “stupid shit” foisted on the world by the Obama administration at Foreign Policy and see what George Will has called the foreign policy of Monty Python .
” For the first time, more Americans think President Barack Obama is not respected by other world leaders than believe he is. Americans’ opinions have shifted dramatically in the past year, after being relatively stable from 2010 to 2013.
The results are based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 6-9. Although opinions about a president’s perceived world standing often track with his job approval rating, a majority of Americans still thought world leaders respected Obama in 2010 and 2011, when his job approval was similar to what it is now. Thus, the recent decline may be more tied to specific international matters from the past year, such as the revelation the U.S. was listening in on foreign leaders’ phone calls, the situation in Syria, increased tensions with Russia, and an uneasy relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
All we can say is “What took so long?” The MSM has lost it’s mojo and can no longer keep the present administration’s incompetence under wraps . It’s about effing time . People are finally starting to pay attention . Too bad he gets another three years to continue the destruction of America .
” The strange thing about the crackup in U.S.-Saudi relations is that it has been on the way for more than two years, like a slow-motion car wreck, but nobody in Riyadh or Washington has done anything decisive to avert it.
What should worry the Obama administration is that Saudi concern about U.S. policy in the Middle East is shared by the four other traditional U.S. allies in the region: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. They argue (mostly privately) thatObama has shredded U.S. influence by dumping President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, opposing the coup that toppled Morsi, vacillating in its Syria policy, and now embarking on negotiations with Iran — all without consulting close Arab allies. “
” What are the benefits of product variety and how does trade affect variety? This video takes a closer look at how trade leads to variety for the consumer and higher productivity for the producer, too. This video also explains why consumers and producers can’t have exactly what they desire in a good by examining the trade-off between variety and average cost. You’ll also learn how the market manages the trade-off between variety and average cost via theories of monopolistic competition. “
Check out Marginal Revolution for a wide variety of online courses to educate yourself in matters of economics , property rights , foreign policy , media , finance and much much more . You’ll be glad that you did .
” An unmistakable sense of unease has been growing in capitals around the world as the U.S. government from afar looks increasingly befuddled – shirking from a military confrontation in Syria, stymied at home by a gridlocked Congress and in danger of defaulting on sovereign debt, which could plunge the world’s financial system into chaos.
While each of the factors may be unrelated to the direct exercise of U.S. foreign policy, taken together they give some allies the sense that Washington is not as firm as it used to be in its resolve and its financial capacity, providing an opening for China or Russia to fill the void, an Asian foreign minister told a group of journalists in New York this week.
Concerns will only deepen now that President Barack Obama canceled travel this weekend to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Bali and the East Asia Summit in Brunei. He pulled out of the gatherings to stay home to deal with the government shutdown and looming fears that Congress will block an increase in U.S. borrowing power, a move that could lead to a U.S. default.
The political turbulence in Washington and potential economic bombshells still to come over the U.S. government shutdown and a possible debt default this month have sent shivers through Europe. The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, worried about the continent’s rebound from the 2008 economic downturn.
“We view this recovery as weak, as fragile, as uneven,” Draghi said at a news conference.
As Europe worries about economics, Asian allies watch in some confusion about what the U.S. is up to with its promise to rebalance military forces and diplomacy in the face of an increasingly robust China.
Global concerns about U.S. policy came to a head with Obama’s handling of the civil war in Syria and the alleged use of chemical weapons by the regime of President Bashar Assad. But, in fact, the worries go far deeper.”
” “We want American leadership,” said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.
“In the past we have seen some America overreach,” said the prime minister of a Western democracy, in a conversation. “Now I think we are seeing America underreach.” He was referring not only to foreign policy but to economic policies, to the limits America has imposed on itself. He missed its old economic dynamism, its crazy, pioneering spirit toward wealth creation—the old belief that every American could invent something, get it to market, make a bundle, rise. The prime minister spoke of a great anxiety and his particular hope. The anxiety: “The biggest risk is not political but social. Wealthy societies with people who think wealth is a given, a birthright—they do not understand that we are in the fight of our lives with countries and nations set on displacing us. Wealth is earned. It is far from being a given. It cannot be taken for granted. The recession reminded us how quickly circumstances can change.” His hope? That the things that made America a giant—”so much entrepreneurialism and vision”—will, in time, fully re-emerge and jolt the country from the doldrums.
The second takeaway of the week has to do with a continued decline in admiration for the American president. Barack Obama‘s reputation among his fellow international players has deflated, his stature almost collapsed. In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due, obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of it is connected to the historical moment America is in.
A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. “World leaders are very negative about Obama,” he said. They are “disappointed, feeling he’s not really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don’t pay that much attention to him anymore.” “
” And so the government of the United States has put its foreign policy in the steady hands of President Vladimir Putin and the KGB. Americans from coast to coast are breathing a sigh of relief. In Congress, the left and the right and those in between, are relieved. In recent months it has become abundantly clear that the President of the United States is not up to the task. He would rather lecture us on domestic issues, such as how to run up trillions of dollars of debt. Then he would like to work on his golf game—do you recall how our elites laughed and laughed when the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, then the Supreme Commander of NATO, and finally the two-term president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, played golf?
Now our foreign policy is in the hands of true professionals. The KGB has a spotty record on human rights, but everyone says they are pros at handling the realities of power. In fact, in yesteryear when they had real power they were—you will remember the term—“prudent.”
Oh, yes, it would probably be better to have the foreign policy of our country residing in the hands of an American professional, say, Henry Kissinger. But Henry has limited time these days and besides his power base is compromised. He has many Republicans on his side, but the American left has never been a big fan of Henry’s. Besides, over the last few weeks Mr. Putin has shown that he has the will and the agility to run foreign policy for his country as well as ours, or at least ours when the President is Barack Obama, a man who before coming to the White House had been a part-time United States senator for four years, a state senator for three terms, and—most spectacularly—a community organizer. Naturally his experience in foreign policy has been a little thin.
The Russians do not have the military might of the United States, if they ever did. But they are clever, and they have their own problem with terrorism at home. They will make an excellent stand-in until we have a president in office who is up to the job of wielding power responsibly, hopefully in 2017. Yet, if the angry women and the clueless college students have their way, we may have to wait until 2021.”
” In 2003, to celebrate 35 years of publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, reasonnamed “35 Heroes of Freedom”—innovators, economists, singers, anti-communists, pornographers, professional athletes, and even the occasional politician who contributed to making the world a freer place since 1968.
These weren’t necessarily the 35 best human beings to span the globe. Richard Nixon, for example, was selected for encouraging “cynicism about government” through his rampant abuses of power. And, well, let’s say Dennis Rodman hasn’t aged particularly well. But the list reflected the happy, unpredictable cacophony that has helped liberate the world one novel or deregulation or electric guitar at a time.
Our 45th anniversary has come along at a darker time. The post-9/11 lurch toward unchecked law enforcement power has now become a permanent feature of our bipartisan consensus, with a Democratic president now ordering assassinations of American teenagers and with millions of Americans unaware that the feds are combing through their telecommunications. Keynesians in Washington responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by ushering in a lost decade of government spending, sluggish growth, and the worst employment numbers since Jimmy Carter was president. And after an initially promising Arab Spring, whole swaths of the Middle East seem poised for a long, sectarian, transnational war.
So it’s fitting that this time around we’re anointing reason’s 45 Enemies of Freedom. Again, these aren’t the worst human beings who bestrode the planet since 1968 (though Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden rank right down there). Some, like John McCain, are even genuine American heroes. What unites them is their active effort to control individuals rather than allow them free choice, to wield power recklessly rather than act on the recognition that the stuff inherently corrupts, and to popularize lies in a world that’s desperate for truth.
You’ll see some familiar names there (we can’t quit you, Tricky Dick!) and some others that deserve to be more notorious. But in our otherwise alphabetical list we’ll start with the man who nearly everyone on our staff nominated, a figure who embodies so much that is wrong with public policy and the political conversation in these United States.“
“Which brings us to the thumbs down side: Could the U.S. really have been blindsided by events in Egypt? The U.S. has the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering capacity of any nation in the world but it could not see a revolutionary moment ready to break in a big nation that is of huge strategic importance? Another problem for Obama this week: His retreat from instituting a key feature of his health care reform — the employer mandate — because the government is not sufficiently ready for it.”
” House Republicans scheduled a new hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attacks and suggested it would include new testimony from eyewitnesses to the deadly Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate who will provide firsthand reports about what happened that day.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., scheduled a May 8 hearing entitled “Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage.” It will be the latest attempt by congressional Republicans to demonstrate that the Obama administration misled the public about the true nature of an attack that killed four people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
Issa did not disclose the witness list but promised the hearing “will expose new facts and details that the Obama administration has tried to suppress.”
The FBI on Wednesday released photos of “three individuals who were on the grounds” of the Benghazi consulate when it was attacked.
The photos, which were posted online by Foreign Policy magazine, are accompanied by an FBI request for information about the attack “from Libyans and people around the world.” “
” As a conservative, picking out things you don’t like about Barack Obama is kind of like pointing to the wettest part of the ocean. It also goes beyond politics. Not only is Barack Obama wrong politically, he’s not a good guy, “cool,” or even moderately likable. To the contrary, he’s one of the nastiest, least admirable people in politics and he gets by based on a phony persona he created when he ran for President in 2008 — along with the help of press corps liberals that work to protect him like they’re on his payroll. Based on his performance and his personality, Barack Obama deserves to be the least popular man ever to sit in the White House.
1) Nobody but an ass would say, “It’s very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth- or sixth-most interesting person.”
2) He’s a former (maybe, who really knows?) coke-snorting pothead who governs with all the care and due diligence you’d expect from a coke-snorting pothead.
3) Barack Obama actually said, “The private sector is doing fine.” Given that the private sector has never at any point been doing fine since he became President, he’d have to be dumb, dishonest or delusional to say something like that.
4) He is a bigger liar than Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter put together. There’s nothing the man says you can count on his meaning unless he’s saying something nice about himself.”
” (Foreign Policy) – Quietly and without much notice, the Air Force has reversed its policy of publishing statistics on drone strikes in Afghanistan as the debate about drone warfare hits a fever pitch in Washington. In addition, it has erased previously published drone strike statistics from its website.”
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