Obama Made This Bed of Thorns! Let Him Lie In It!

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You Liberals and Hollywood are to blame for this poor unwed mother's plight. What do you intend to do about it? http://www.youtube.com/embed/rPRtIOmPOD0
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Most everything I read talks about laying blame and how many Republicans are frightened the partial shut down  will cost them standing with voters.

The best tactic for Republicans is stand united ,stick to your principles, if you have any left , take your tails from between your legs and let the chips fall where they may. Constantly offering solutions which will be rejected simply serves to prove how frightened you are and what patsies you have become.

You did not vote for Obamascare, you have no finger prints on this monstrosity so let Democrats wrestle with it's consequences as it becomes enforced.

Obama is not the same president Americans elected twice. They have finally taken the measure of the  man and have found him to be inept and divisive.  Why go with your hat in your hand trying to pull his chestnuts out of the fire?  Quit appeasing him.  He made this bed of thorns, let him lie in it.

America will survive with 800,000 less government employees.  (See 1 and 1a below.)
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I have written time again and continue to predict  should Israel attack Iran it will do so through Saudi Air Space.  When strange bed fellows have a common cause they often can put aside their differences!  (See 2 below.)
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Is Russia's attitude towards Israel about to change?  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Fred Barnes: The President's Shutdown

Where leadership is needed, Obama stays on the sidelines—except when he's attacking Republicans.

By 
• FRED BARNES

President Obama is sitting out one of the most important policy struggles since he entered the White House. With the government shutdown, it has reached the crisis stage. His statement about the shutdown on Tuesday from the White House Rose Garden was more a case of kibitzing than leading. He still refuses to take charge. He won't negotiate with Republicans, though the fate of ObamaCare, funding of the government and the future of the economic recovery are at stake. He insists on staying on the sidelines—well, almost.

Mr. Obama has rejected conciliation and compromise with Republicans. Instead, he attacks them in sharp, partisan language in speech after speech. His approach—dealing with a deadlock by not dealing with it—is unprecedented. He has gone where no president has gone before.

Can anyone imagine an American president—from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan, from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton—doing this? Of course not. They didn't see presidential leadership as optional. For them and nearly every other president, it was mandatory. It was part of the job, the biggest part.

LBJ kept in touch daily with Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate, and never missed an opportunity to engage him in reaching agreement on civil rights, taxes, school construction and other contentious issues. Mr. Obama didn't meet one-on-one with Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, until 18 months into his presidency and doesn't call on him now to collaborate.

Presidents have two roles. In the current impasse, Mr. Obama emphasizes his partisan role as leader of the Democratic Party. It's a legitimate role. But as president, he's the only national leader elected by the entire nation. He alone represents all the people. And this second, nonpartisan role takes precedence in times of trouble, division or dangerous stalemate. A president is expected to take command. Mr. Obama hasn't done that.

The extent to which he has abdicated this role shows up in his speeches. On the eve of the shutdown, he warned that a government closure "will have a very real economic impact on real people, right away." Defunding or delaying his health-care program—the goal of Republicans—would have even worse consequences, he suggested. "Tens of thousands of Americans die every single year because they don't have access to affordable health care," Mr. Obama said.

In an appearance in the White House pressroom, he said that "military personnel—including those risking their lives overseas for us right now—will not get paid on time" should Republicans force a shutdown. At an appearance in Largo, Md., the president accused Republicans of "threatening steps that would actually badly hurt our economy . . . Even if you believe that ObamaCare somehow was going to hurt the economy, it won't hurt the economy as bad as a government shutdown."

Yet as he was predicting widespread suffering, Mr. Obama steadfastly refused to negotiate with Republicans. He told House Speaker John Boehner in a phone call that he wouldn't be talking to him anymore. With the shutdown hours away, he called Mr. Boehner again. He still didn't negotiate and said he wouldn't on the debt limit either.

Mr. Obama has made Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid his surrogate in the conflict with Republicans. Mr. Reid has also declined to negotiate. In fact, Politico reported that when the president considered meeting with Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell, along with the two Democratic congressional leaders, Mr. Reid said he wouldn't attend and urged Mr. Obama to abandon the idea. The president did just that.

By anointing Mr. Reid, President Obama put power in the hands of the person with potentially the most to gain from a shutdown. Mr. Reid's position as Senate leader is imperiled in next year's midterm election. Republicans are expected to gain seats. They need a net of six pickups to take control and oust Mr. Reid. His strategy is to persuade voters that the shutdown was caused by tea-party crazies in the GOP, and that turning over the Senate to them would be foolhardy. If Mr. Reid's claim resonates with voters, it might keep Republicans from gaining control of the Senate.

Mr. Obama insists that he is ready to discuss tweaks in ObamaCare "through the normal democratic processes." But, he said last week, "that will not happen under the threat of a showdown."

It probably won't happen in less frantic situations either. The president in the past has proved to be a difficult negotiating partner. In his first term, he blew up a "grand bargain" on taxes and spending with Mr. Boehner by demanding even higher taxes at the last minute. Without what Mr. McConnell calls a "forcing mechanism," no major agreement on domestic issues has been reached.

The three deals that Mr. Obama has signed off on—all negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden—were forced. The president agreed in 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years as they were about to expire. In 2012, he made the Bush cuts permanent except for the wealthiest taxpayers. In 2011, he agreed to spending cuts in exchange for an increase in the debt limit as it was close to being breached.

The president's tactic of attacking Republicans during a crisis while spurning negotiations bodes for a season of discord and animosity in the final three-and-one-quarter years of the Obama presidency. That he has alienated Republicans doesn't seem to trouble Mr. Obama.

"He's been a terrible president, just awful," Mr. McConnell told me. The McConnell agenda consists of stopping the president from raising taxes and boosting spending. And the focus on ObamaCare will continue. "The ObamaCare fight is not over," Mr. McConnell says. "This is the gift that keeps on giving."

Mr. Boehner has vowed to stay away from efforts to come to terms with the president on deficit reduction. Mr. Obama says he is willing to curb spending by reforming entitlements, but Republicans no longer believe him. They've given up on the possibility of a grand bargain.

Today the buzz in media circles in Washington is that the shutdown is a defining moment for Mr. Boehner. It may well be. But it's also a critical test of Mr. Obama's leadership. And by declining to lead, so far, he has failed that test.

1a) Stand Pat

By William Kristol

Our upcoming WEEKLY STANDARD cruise had me thinking (only a bit!) about blackjack, since the ship's casino is occasionally (rarely!) frequented after dinner by TWS editors and guests. I remember being told on a previous cruise by a real gambler that the characteristic error of occasional blackjack players is to take another card when they should stand pat. They do this when they have a mediocre hand and over-estimate the odds of improving it rather than busting, while under-estimating the odds of winning by just standing pat; and they do it when they think the dealer must have a winning hand because he has a strong up card, and think they need to take a big risk when they may well not. In other words, most blackjack players are either too hopeful they'll improve or too fearful of dealer's strength. They'd often do better if they just stood pat.

That's the Republicans' situation today. They have a hand they could easily make worse by panicking, and which could be good enough for a win or draw if they keep calm. And their odds could improve if they now take a few days vigorously to make their case to the country: that they have acted to fund the government—while protecting Americans from having to buy insurance they don't want from exchanges they can't trust, and while reversing the special deal the Obama administration arranged for Congress so that Congress will have to live by the laws they impose on others. They could also stand ready to pass legislation, as they did before the shutdown with respect to military pay, addressing discrete parts of the government that might require exemption from the shutdown as real problems become apparent.

The best thing Speaker Boehner could probably do now is to say it's obvious Senate Democrats aren't going to negotiate, that the House GOP remains ready to talk (and the GOP conferees are in town and ready to confer), but that he's sending the rest of the Republican congressmen home for the next few days in order to talk with their constituents. The members would be liberated from the Beltway bubble, free to make their case where they can best make it, able to fight back against media attempts to exaggerate the consequences of the shutdown, and would have a chance to remind voters, in the exchanges' first week of operation, of just how bad in how many ways Obamacare is.

Meanwhile, the GOP leadership can think through the debt ceiling negotiations that will have to begin soon (since neither Boehner nor Harry Reid has the votes to pass a debt limit increase on a partisan basis). Indeed, the speaker could invite Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi to a pleasant lunch to begin those talks.

So the GOP's agenda for the rest of this week (and maybe until the debt limit deadline of October 17) is pretty simple: Stand pat on the shutdown, don't panic because of media hype or a few snap polls, make their case on the mandate and the special deal for Congress in particular, and on Obamacare in general—and figure out how to play their hand on the debt limit.

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2) Israel and Saudi Arabia are coordinating policies to counter US détente with Iran

Associates of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday, Oct. 2, leaked word to the media that high-ranking Gulf emirate officials had recently visited Israel, signaling a further widening in the rift between Israel and President Barack Obama over his outreach to Tehran. These visits were in line with the ongoing exchanges Israel was holding with Saudi and Gulf representatives to align their actions for offsetting any potential American easing-up on Iran’s nuclear program.

This is the first time Israel official sources have publicly aired diplomatic contacts of this kind in the region. They also reveal that Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates have agreed to synchronize their lobbying efforts in the US Congress to vote down the Obama administration’s moves on Iran.

After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama at the White House Monday, Sept. 30, Secretary of State John Kerry carried a message requesting moderation in the speech he was to deliver next day to the United Nations.

On the other hand, at least two European diplomats, German and French, made the opposite request: they asked for a hard-hitting Israeli peroration for setting boundaries - not so much for Iran’s nuclear program as for attempt to slow down President Obama’s dash for détente with Tehran.

It is feared in European capitals that the US is running too fast and too far in his bid for reconciliation with the Islamic Republic, to the detriment by association of their own standing I the Persian Gulf.

They are moreover miffed by the way Washington used Europe as a tool in the long nuclear negotiations between the Six World Powers with Iran and is now dumping them in favor of direct dealings with Iranian leaders.

Netanyahu decided not to accede to either request. Instead he laid out his credo: Iran must discontinue nuclear development and dismantle its program or face up to the risk of a lone Israeli military attack.

The look on the face of US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, sitting at the US delegation’s table in the UN hall, showed he had realized that the prime minister’s words were not just addressed to Tehran; they were an unforeseen broadside against the Obama administration’s Iranian strategy.

The dissonance between Jerusalem and Washington on Iran and its nuclear aspirations, played down after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting at the White House, emerged at full blast in the UN speech. The consequences are likely to be reflected in American media, as they were at the low point in relations in 2010, when administration officials day by day planted negative assessments of Israel’s military inadequacies for damaging Iran’s nuclear facilities.

After the UN speech, the Israeli Home Defense Minister Gilead Erdan tried to pour oil on troubled waters by commenting that the prime minister’s speech had strengthened Obama’s hand against Tehran. However, Netanyahu had a different object. It was to paint Washington’s new partner in détente in the blackest colors, even though he knows there is no chance of swaying the US President from his pursuit of Tehran and the sanctions, which he believes to be the only effective deterrent for giving the Iranians pause, will soon start unraveling.

Binyamin Netanyahu now faces the uphill job of repairing his own credibility. For five years has had declared again and again that Israel’s military option is on track in certain circumstances, but has never lived up to the threat. He has followed a path of almost total military passivity.

President Obama knows that Israel’s military capacity is up to a solo operation against Iran. Tehran, however, though conscious of the IDF’s high military, technological and cyber warfare capabilities, is convinced that Israel like the United States has lost the appetite for a military initiative.

Netanyahu must now revive Israel’s deterrence and convince Iran that his challenge at the UN had ended an era of military passivity and should be taken seriously.

In the coming weeks, therefore, the Iranians will react with steps to upset US-Israeli relations, possibly by raising military tensions in the region directly or through their proxies. Until now Tehran operated from outside Washington and its inner councils. Now, smart Iranian diplomats will be sitting down with the US president close to his ear for friendly discussions on ways to further their rapprochement.

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3)

Victory for Russian Opponents of Israel - New Winds Blowing from

Russia is prepared to heighten tensions with Israel and damage the positive relations painstakingly constructed over the last 20 years. It may be the result of Russia’s frustration with the level of Israel’s cooperation on political and economic issues. In any case, evident here is the victory of those in the Russian establishment who do not support the strong relationship built with Israel. By Zvi Magen The tenth annual conference of the Valdai Discussion Club, which took place on September 16-19, 2013, was attended by experts and media professionals who focus on Russia, as well as senior Russian establishment figures and policymakers. The international gathering traditionally serves as a national forum of sorts for discussing a range of topics that lead Russia’s national agenda. Since its inception, the project has been under the direct sponsorship of President Putin, who views it as an important channel for Russia’s leadership to relay significant messages to the international community. The leading foreign policy goals defined at the conference reflect Russia’s overt intention of reconstructing a Russian empire. As for the Middle East, considered a region critical to Russian interests, the discussion centered primarily on Syria.Topics: , Israel , Syria , Russia In addition to foreign experts and Russian public representatives, including members of the opposition, the upper echelon of the Kremlin was present, including President Putin himself, Foreign Minister Lavrov, Defense Minister Shoigu, Presidential Administration Chief of Staff Ivanov, and others. The major issues discussed at the forum related to Russia’s forging its future path domestically (definition of its political system and the main features of this approach) and internationally (a situation assessment of the regional and global systems and delineation of foreign policy goals). New approaches as to the essence of the governing structure were formulated, such as a preference for the autocratic trend and a controlled democracy. Defined after two decades of uncertainty and ambiguity, the leading foreign policy goals reflect Russia’s overt intention of reconstructing a Russian empire. Russia sees itself as a separate civilization seeking parity of status with the West, symbolized first and foremost by the United States, and seeks to undermine the current unipolar model. Within this context, Russia is prepared for military, technological, and economic competition with the West, i.e., in fields in which it currently lags behind. Russia favors turning toward Asia and seeking to establish integrative frameworks with nations in the region – the Eurasian approach. It seems that some of Russia’s decisions stem from its assessment that the international status of the United States has declined, a direct result of the weakness of the Obama administration. This is considered a window of opportunity for Russia in its competition with the United States. As for the Middle East – still considered a region critical to Russian interests, in part because it is the focal point of the threat of radical Islam against Russia itself – the discussion centered primarily on Syria. Senior Russian officials conveyed the following messages: Apart from its role in resolving the chemical weapons issue, Russia is an important actor in the Middle East. Regarding Syria, Russia is interested not only in resolving the civil war but also in realigning the overall world order. Russia does not need Assad himself; rather, it is interested in the welfare of the Syrian people and in international justice. The end of the Syrian chemical weapons affair does not spell the end of the civil war. Ending the war is possible only through an international settlement, and the road to such a settlement runs through Geneva-2. The Russians continue to insist that the identity of the culprit in the chemical weapons attack is unclear, though they strongly suspect the opposition. Nonetheless, they continue to support the agreement to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. While Russia is not sure whether Syria will fully cooperate in the dismantling of its chemical weapons stockpiles, it does not think Syria should be punished (i.e., Russia does not want the agreement to include a threat of sanctions), as Syria is not like the West and conducts itself differently. - The achievement in Syria can be leveraged regarding the Iranian issue. Among the Middle East issues raised – explicitly and bluntly – by Putin himself was the Israeli nuclear issue. Putin’s claim was that Syria’s chemical weapons were Damascus’ alternative to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and that it is reasonable to demand that Israel divest itself of the bomb as it doesn’t need it, given its military and technological superiority in the region. Putin argued that Israel’s atomic weapons, which threaten its neighbors, only hinder Israel on the international arena and make Israel a target. He added that there are those in Israel who oppose its possession of nuclear weapons (he referred to the Vanunu affair though without mentioning the name), and that Israel, which in any case is not a member of the nuclear club, can legitimately be required to relinquish its nuclear weapons. President Putin’s statement raises serious questions. To be sure, it contained no change in Moscow’s fundamental positions, as Russia consistently votes against Israel at the International Atomic Energy Agency (as it does on many issues in the United Nations) and supports the Arab resolution on “Israel’s capabilities.” Russia did so as well at the most recent IAEA forum, where it remained – along with its supporters – in the minority, against all the countries of the West that opposed the resolution. One may assume that the United States will not join the Russians on this issue any time soon. At Valdai, however, the bluntness and tone of the message coming from so senior an official imply a different posture than what was in the past, both in the bilateral and regional contexts. Bilaterally, Russia has so far made a point of keeping its relations with Israel friendly and has promoted cooperation in a range of fields. This time, the message from Russia’s top political figure leaves no room for doubt that Russia is prepared to heighten tensions with Israel and damage the positive relations painstakingly constructed over the last 20 years. It may be the result of Russia’s frustration with the level of Israel’s cooperation on political and economic issues. In any case, evident here is the victory of those in the Russian establishment who do not support the strong relationship built with Israel. Regionally, this Russian posture reflects the desire of the would-be empire to raise its status as a regional player with a say in the rules of the game while lowering the status of the United States as the leading power in the arena. Among its motives is Russia’s desire to drag Israel into negotiations on Syria and Iran, in part as additional Russian leverage in its regional game against the United States. In this context, Russia’s interest would be to promote Iran’s influence while delaying the emerging dialogue between Iran and the United States, by creating an association between the Iranian nuclear program and the atomic arsenal that Israel, according to foreign media, possesses – a move that is consistent with Iran’s interests. Also, should the process of dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons be derailed, the idea could come into play with the accusatory finger pointed at Israel. Russia will likely avoid translating this approach from rhetoric into practice. Still, if this approach is pursued on a practical level, it has the potential to change the regional rules of the game. Russia would be shifting its so-called balanced policy on the international arena and its status as a fair mediator, and instead choosing a unilateral stance on the Middle East. In turn, Russia’s international and regional conduct could well negatively affect Israel’s strategic interests. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------