If Obama's foreign polices are working then perhaps I am missing something. Did not know burning the American Flag was a sign of love and respect.
Arab/Muslim rioters seem to be sending a message they no longer fear and/or respect us.
But of course what do I know about politics and foreign affairs.
I am just old fashioned, think for myself, unlike our Ambassador to The U.N., as well as the Secretary of State, The president's Press Secretary and even old Barack himself. Progressives seem to suspend logic regarding what was patently obvious because they claim they need an investigation to remove their cataracts. Such take years!
Meanwhile, these folks/ public servants get paid big bucks for their lack of comprehension and knowing we allow and protect free speech.
Sucking up to terrorists gains one little currency unless you are not a student of history or are one of them. But the administration knows best; so it is spending $70,000 to apologize again.
Recognizing we are at war, I guess, comes later - maybe after the election.
But then what do I know!
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The new Obamaite's 'parroting points' are that Romney and Ryan have no foreign affairs experience.
To this I would respond as follows:
a) I would like to have Obamaites explain what foreign affairs experience Obama had when he ran for president unless the peculiar nature of Chicago and Illinois are considered foreign to the rest of America.
b) In view of the failed foreign policy of Obama doing virtually the opposite would be an excellent guide, ie. use common sense, do not appease, maintain America's military strength and mean and do what you say.
Finally, throw away reset buttons! They seem not to work. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Sabotaging Iran's nuclear program continues and take many forms. (See 2 below.)
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As Mitt stumbles the advice of how to course correct increases. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Free Barack: Elect Romney
By Clarice Feldman
It is increasingly obvious that Obama wants to get out of the White House, not just to take vacations, visit Letterman, and go golfing, but to be free of the responsibilities of the office of President itself, and those horrid media types are doing everything in their power to make him stay where he is. It's time to free Barack.
This week for the very first time, Obama got free of the phalanx of media guards -- the gang Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, calls " Pack Journalism" and faced actual questioning on Univision, instead of the yentas on The View, Entertainment Tonight, "Pimp With the Limp" and such, and he made clear what I've suspected for a long time: He wants out of the Presidency. Yes, you heard me -- he wants O.U.T.
"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside." So said the Man whose 2008 campaign theme was "Hope and Change." "You can only change it from the outside."
There's plenty of evidence that his passive aggression is behind much of his failure in office. How else to explain things like turning over his signature legislation, Obamacare, to Reid and Pelosi, refusing to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu in favor or a joke fest on Letterman where he claims not to even know the extent of the national debt? Going off to a fundraiser in Vegas as our embassies burn and a dead or dying Ambassador is being hauled through the streets of Benghazi?
Did he assume he was invulnerable to the wrath of Univision viewers? Did he assume they didn't care that14 high officials were behind the ludicrously planned and operated Fast & Furious which resulted in the murder of hundreds of Mexicans and that undoubtedly Holder and Obama would themselves be implicated had they not withheld evidence from investigators? He is resisting our demands that he adequately perform the job of the Chief Executive, dodging all responsibility, blaming others for his failures. In short, he is intentionally refusing to perform his job.
Personally, I am not sure he ever was even minimally suited for the job. Many, with good reason, argue that he never was. Here's Kevin DuJann of HillBuzz on that point:
The reality is that 2008 was a massive fluke and was powered largely by raw emotion: Americans thought it was time to "make history" and elect a magical black man to be President because they thought the color of this guy's skin was going to "change the world". Well, they were right about that...but in a very Twilight Zone kind of way people were not at all careful with what they wished for and the change that resulted over the last four years isn't what they wanted.Record unemployment, with between 25-30 million Americans either out of work or underemployed. $16 Trillion in national debt (and exploding with more daily). Islamic radicals conquering the Middle East, raping and murdering male ambassadors, and the White House ignoring clear security warnings and even considering releasing the "Blind Sheik" 1993 World Trade Center bomber. Obama's watching the world burn and is enjoying it. Meanwhile, Obamacare's terrified small businesses, forced many of them to shutter, and has frozen most hiring. We're in an economic Depression caused by the wasteful 2009 "stimulus" (that went mostly into union coffers) and the uncertainty and zealous regulations of Obamacare.People know Obama has failed and made a giant mess in Washington. Many are still uncomfortable admitting the first black man in the job was not as magical as they thought he'd be. These people not only won't turn out for him in numbers he needs them to in November, but here in Chicago at least they have no interest at all in physically accosting, screaming at, or otherwise trying to bully anyone who doesn't support Obama.
Reports are surfacing suggesting, indeed, there are plans afoot for one of his most generous sponsors, Penny Pritzker, to buy him a mansion in Hawaii to which the family can retire in January,
So, you might ask? Why didn't he just throw in the towel and head off to the links in Oahu before the nomination and campaign? I can't be sure of course, but a key reason it seems to me is that the pack journalists keep smothering his cries for help (mistakes and disengagement) and won't let him out.
Take the Romney tape this week.
Let's start with David Corn, the fellow who reported about it in "Mother Jones." He is a longtime leftwing propagandist, which should have raised questions in any pundit, reporter or reader's mind when it appeared.
Years ago I reported in the Weekly Standard how David Corn had exaggerated Armitage's leak to Novak into a story that ensnared Lewis Libby and almost destroyed the Bush Administration.
The Nation's David Corn, a friend of Wilson's, reframed the tale, giving it a more lurid cast and a plotline that would drive media coverage--and in turn Fitzgerald's investigation--for the next three years. Valerie Plame, he reported, was a "covert agent" who had been deliberately "outed" as "thuggish" payback for her husband's brave whistle blowing. Moreover, this outing probably violated the law, placing her, intelligence agents everywhere, and national security at risk. This blonde Emma Peel-tied-to-the-railroad-tracks-by-lying-warmongers version of the story (assisted by a timely leak from the CIA that Director Tenet had referred the case to the Justice Department) led to press and congressional demands for an investigation by an outside prosecutor.
And then he falsely accused Andrew Breitbart of selectively editing the Shirley Sherrod tape.
This time he outdid himself. The tape be provided as the "complete tape" which he said he got through the auspices of Jimmy Carter's unemployed grandson was missing 1-2 minutes in the first part (which dealt with the political effect of 47% or Americans not paying taxes and dependent on the federal government) and he took his time admitting that after Legal Insurrection noticed the obvious cut and called him on it,
Corn reacted vigorously to Romney's suggestion that he only provided "snippets," and then Corn released what purported to be the complete audio/video in two parts. The "complete" version was consistent with the original edited audio/video. Again, there was no disclosure by Corn that there might be something missing. (Corn added an "update" after my original story ran."To the contrary, Corn went out of his way to assert that there was no "filtering" and that the full audio/video had been released. As Corn explained to Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast (emphasis mine):Is the liberal media making too much of the Romney video? "It feeds into a narrative he's been fighting all along, that he's a 1 percenter, not one of us, doesn't really understand it," Corn says. And since these are the candidate's own words, "there's no filter here whatsoever, there's no out-of-context argument to be made."But there was a filter. As reported in my prior post, Corn has admitted that 1-2 minutes of audio/video are missing. That missing audio/video includes part of Romney's controversial answer.Corn says that his source told him the recorder shut off on its own right in the middle of Romney's answer, and then was not turned on until Romney already was into a different topic. We have no way of verifying that source's story, but we do know that there were various edited pieces of the tape circulating prior to Corn's involvement, so it is just as possible that Corn's source or someone else handling the video prior to Corn edited out part of the answer.It is impossible for us to know if Romney said something, which changed or put the remarks in context. Romney doesn't remember the event except for what exists on audio/video. Maybe in the fullness of the answer, the answer was less "inelegant" than it appears. Maybe Romney put some of the context on it that we have heard in his interviews the past two days.What difference does it make?Think how the initial 24 hours of controversy might have played out differently had Corn made the disclosure up front. That part of the answer was missing from the tape would have provided a valuable context both to readers/listeners, and to the Romney campaign. That never happened because there was no disclosure by Corn that part of the tape was missing.
With regard to this part of the tape, Corn embellished Romney's temperate words, suggesting falsely that he had called government dependents "shiftless moochers" and "parasitic free-riders". Cecil Turner did a far better job describing what Romney did say than did Corn:
The point is the inherent unworkability of a system wherein a majority pay nothing into a fund, and yet control how the monies are spent. Whether we refer to the tragedy of the commons or the (probably misquoted) bit on democracy from Andrew Tytler,'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.'It should be obvious such a system cannot work, and that we're perilously close to the point where most people will have a rational vested interest in voting for fiscal insanity. And that's not good for anybody. Tragic, in fact.
But Corn's mendacity was worse than that, as time and scrutiny showed. The second part of the "complete tape" that Corn provided was deliberately edited to change entirely the nature of Romney's remarks on Israel:
1a) Obama’s Quagmire: Syria and the Islamist Arc
Hammered on leadership, the president struggles for a Middle East policy.
U.S. and Western diplomats are concerned that the longer Bashar al-Assad hangs on to his failing regime in Damascus, the more likely it is that the aftermath of the Syrian rebellion will be dominated by Islamist elements, completing an arc of newly empowered radical groups along the southern half of the Mediterranean from Libya to Syria.
And more and more, the fast-moving events on the ground in Syria may be having an impact on a U.S. presidential election that most analysts thought would once be focused almost entirely on the economy, as Republican nominee Mitt Romney continues his assault on Obama’s Middle East policies. “It’s been over a year since the president said Bashar al-Assad must go,” Dan Senor, a senior Romney adviser on foreign policy, said Friday on CBS’s This Morning. “He’s still in power. America looks impotent in the region. President Romney would look to do more to help the opposition movement on the ground in Syria, working with our allies like the Turks, the Saudis, to get the opposition more training, more resources, more weapons.”
Obama officials, joined by Western diplomats working on the problem, argue that Romney’s approach is absurdly simplistic, in large part because no one knows what kind of regime would follow Assad, nor which “end users” would inherit any Western weaponry supplied to the opposition. As a cautionary tale, they point to the rise of other Islamist political groups, led by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that have taken power in nations transformed by the Arab Spring.
According to a senior Western official who recently met with opposition leaders in liberated areas of Syria, the diplomatic arguments between the U.S. and France on one hand, and Russia, a longtime Assad ally, on the other, increasingly focus on this point, especially as the Assad regime grows weaker. Each side draws different conclusions from the massive protests and attacks in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in recent weeks against U.S. and Western interests that took the lives of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. “The Russians argue that we must stick with Assad to prevent the rise of the Islamists. We say any continuation of Bashar’s policies [the bloody suppression and mass killings] will only cause a more Islamic outcome.”
There may be no getting around such an outcome in any case. “In the last four decades, Islamists brilliantly positioned themselves as the alternative to the failed secular ‘authoritarian bargain,’ " Fawaz Gerges, director of the Mideast Center at the London School of Economics, writes in a new essay, “The Islamist Moment.” “They have already won majorities of parliamentary seats in a number of countries, including Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, and will likely make further gains in Libya, Jordan, and maybe even in Syria after the dust settles on the raging battlefield there.”
A takeover by such groups in Syria is far from certain. As in Egypt, which recently installed a Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, Syria’s exiled Muslim Brotherhood has long carried with it the political prestige of being the only organized group to have opposed the regime over the decades. Emblazoned in the national memory of Syrians is the massacre in the city of Hama in 1982, when the regime of then-President Hafez Assad ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of Brotherhood loyalists. Today, the Brotherhood controls about one-fourth of the Syrian National Council, the largest Syrian opposition group. At the same time, however, Christian and Alawite minorities make up a much larger portion of Syria’s population than they do in Egypt, along with Bedouin tribes and Kurds that are also less likely to back the Brotherhood.
Even so, the longer the horrific civil war in Syria goes on while the West stands aside, the more the rebels who ultimately inherit power will be prone to anti-American, possibly jihadist, sentiments. The fear is that what began as a largely secular, diverse rebellion could devolve into a struggle between Islamist political groups dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, as occurred in Egypt.
Obama’s Syria headache is yet more evidence that, when it comes to U.S. interests, the nearly 2-year-old Arab Spring has proved to be an inherently ambiguous development, one that virtually dictates an ambivalent response. In effect, Washington has had to trade off U.S.-friendly autocrats like Hosni Mubarak for relatively unfriendly democrats like Morsi. “We can’t support democracy and not support the people who win the elections,” said an Obama official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But that said, we have made clear to these governments they have obligations they need to meet, like maintaining the peace treaty with Israel, upholding minority rights and other progress in transition."
Still, all these ambiguities haven’t stopped Romney from inveighing against Obama’s alleged vacillation, and insisting that the solution would be a tougher U.S. response that Romney says the region has been seeking. “They’ve been calling out for American leadership for a long time,” Senor said on CBS.
That’s nonsense, administration supporters say. “People have this false notion that we’re either arming the [Syrian] rebels or doing nothing. The real truth is we’re actually doing quite a bit,” said the Obama official. “We’re providing a lot of non-lethal resources, including communications equipment, and helping them become more organized. And part of the process is we’re getting to know them better.” Calls for more arms to the rebels or a no-fly zone—which will be a topic of discussion at next week’s annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly—ignore the perils of such policies, especially Western air support, this official says. “The Syrian air defenses are sophisticated. And unlike Libya, it’s not opposition in one part of the country and government troops in another. They’re all kind of mixed in.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to call for tougher action in Syria at the U.N. next week. Even so, Western officials say there is no momentum for a no-fly zone or policy of arming the rebels.
Obama has also sought to leverage U.S. aid in getting Islamist leaders such as Egypt’s Morsi to protect U.S. diplomats and interests in the aftermath of the Libya attacks. “When the rubber hit the road, the president called Morsi and got results,” the official said. But even as Morsi has gingerly acceded to some of Obama’s demands, he has also called for the arrest of the makers of the anti-Islam video that has provoked so much violence across the Muslim world in recent days.
In Syria, of course, Assad has been unfriendly to U.S. interests, and an ally of Iran, so his departure from power might not be of as much concern as Mubarak’s was in Egypt. But U.S. officials fear that the witch’s brew of ethnic and tribal communities that make up Syria could signal a long-term stalemate in which violent extremists feel freer to operate, especially if Assad and his remaining loyalists retreat from Damascus into a rump state controlled by his Alawite minority.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Report: Iran uncovered spying device disguised as rock at Fordow nuclear plantThe monitoring device exploded when Iranian troops near Fordow nuclear plant disturbed it, Sunday Times reports, citing Western intelligence.
A monitoring device disguised as a rock exploded last month when Iranian troops near Fordow nuclear plant disturbed it, the Sunday Times reported, citing Western intelligence sources.
According to the report, Iran's Revolutionary Guards were on patrol last month to check terminals connecting data and telephone links at the underground nuclear enrichment plant, when they saw the rock and tried to move it.
"Iranian experts who examined the scene of the explosion found the remains of a device capable of intercepting data from computers at the plant, where uranium is being enriched in centrifuges," said the report, "It is feared a significant source of intelligence may have been lost for the West."
Iran initially kept news of the explosion secret, the report said, but last week, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the country's vice-president and head of its nuclear energy agency, revealed that explosives had been used to cut power lines from the nearby city of Qom to Fordow on August 17. A day later, he said, IAEA inspectors had asked for an unannounced visit to Fordow.
"Does this visit have any connection to that detonation? Who other than the IAEA inspectors can have access to the complex in such a short time?" Abbasi-Davani said on September 17.
Speaking at the annual member state gathering of the International Atomic Energy Agency that day, Abbassi-Davani said "terrorists and saboteurs might have intruded the agency and might be making decisions covertly," to undermine Iran's nuclear program.
"It should be recalled that power cut-off is one of the ways to break down centrifuge machines," he said, referring to the machines used to enrich uranium, which can have both civilian and military purposes.
Iran accused Germany's Siemens on Saturday of implanting tiny explosives inside equipment the Islamic Republic purchased for its disputed nuclear program, a charge the technology giant denied.
Prominent lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iranian security experts discovered the explosives and removed them before detonation, adding that authorities believe the booby-trapped equipment was sold to derail uranium enrichment efforts.
"The equipment was supposed to explode after being put to work, in order to dismantle all our systems," he said. "But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy."
Siemens denied the charge and said its nuclear division has had no business with Iran since the 1979 revolution that led to its current clerical state.
"Siemens rejects the allegations and stresses that we have no business ties to the Iranian nuclear program," spokesman for the Munich-based company Alexander Machowetz said.
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3)-Just say what you stand for, Mitt
By Dana Milbank
The best political minds at Romney headquarters have come up with an antidote to the candidate’s floundering presidential bid: “More Mitt” — putting more of him in front of more voters more often.
This is supposed to be a good thing? After watching the candidate on Florida’s Gulf Coast, I’m not convinced.
It’s true that Romney hasn’t exactly been burning up the campaign trail of late. AtRomney’s event in Sarasota on Thursday, his lone public event of the day, one reporter in the traveling entourage joked that Romney isn’t running for president — he’s walking.
But voters don’t need More Mitt. They need Core Mitt: a sense of what exactly he proposes to do as president. At this late stage, just six weeks before the election, even his most ardent supporters don’t know.
Some 2,000 Floridians got a heaping portion of Mitt on Thursday afternoon — I saw two dozen of them carted off by medics after they passed out in the 90-degree heat — as they listened to him rail for nearly 20 minutes about the ills of all things Obama. Yet he failed to give these hard-bitten Republicans here in Katherine Harriscountry what they craved most: a reason to be for him. He offered nary a specific about what he would do as president.
In the Sarasota crowd, I spoke with Billy Murphy, a retiree holding a poster board with the hand-lettered message: “NO REDISTRIBUTION TO FREELOADERS.” Murphy, an avowed foe of President Obama, will support Romney — but he does not know why. “He hasn’t really told the people yet what he’s gonna do,” Murphy said. “We need to know.” Noting Murphy’s sign, I suggested that he must, at least, agree with Romney’s criticism of the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income taxes and expect government handouts. “I don’t know,” Murphy said, suddenly sheepish. “I’m one of the 47 percent. I’m on Social Security.”
As Romney’s difficulties mount — strained finances, weak polling, unforced errors, criticism from conservatives and moves by vulnerable Republicans to distance themselves from him — his advisers have been debating how to revive the campaign. Focus on jobs? Provide more specifics? Moderate his positions? Hit Obama on redistributing wealth? Go after Obama on foreign policy? Defend his “47 percent” remark? Back away from it?
Ultimately, Romney’s advisers declared that the candidate would present a more detailed agenda. But that was not in evidence in Sarasota. Instead, Romney did what he has done when in trouble in the past: He lashed out.
“Do you want four more years with 23 million people out of work or underemployed?” he asked. “Do you want four more years where incomes go down every single year? You want four more years with gasoline prices doubling? Do you want four more years with unemployment above 8 percent?”
Romney was shouting, jabbing his finger in the air. He repeatedly accused Obama of throwing “the white flag of surrender” and of changing his slogan from “yes, we can” to “no, I can’t. . . . He went from the president of change to the president who can’t get change.”
As for his alternative, Romney promised “five steps” to revive the economy – and then, Rick Perry-style, forgot the fifth. “And number five — number five — if you want to see jobs really take off in this country, we’re going to have to the number of – all five of these things.” He then went through the list again, finally coming up with “number five is to champion small business.”
The others — such as “making sure we have trade that works” or getting “on track to a balanced budget” — were no more specific. Neither were his vows that “jobs is my priority” and that “I will never apologize for America.”
Romney’s attacks on Obama were well received by the crowd of about 2,000 assembled outside the Ringling Museum of Art (yes, named after the circus tycoon). Several in attendance cooled themselves with “Defeat Obama” fans, and there were the usual depictions in the crowd of Obama the socialist. One of the older Romney supporters present, Bev Andersen, said she and her husband agree that Romney “needs to kick a little ass.”
But while they were united in antipathy toward the incumbent, those in the audience I spoke with asked the challenger to do something more than criticize Obama. They asked for more details on Medicare, national security, health care and taxes.
“He’s got to push his platform, and not get into mudslinging,” said Sue Kerzisnik of Sarasota.
She’s right. Voters don’t need More Mitt. They just need to know what he’s for.
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