Welcome to Obama's America! (See 1 below.)
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Maybe I should take up golf. (See 2 below.)
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Israel takes action. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) The Daydream and the Nightmare
Obama isn't doing his job. He's waiting for history to recognize his greatness.
By Peggy Noonan
I don't know if we sufficiently understand how weird and strange, how historically unparalleled, this presidency has become. We've got a sitting president who was just judged in a major poll to be the worst since World War II. The worst president in 70 years! Quinnipiac University's respondents also said, by 54% to 44%, that the Obama administration is not competent to run the government. A Zogby Analytics survey asked if respondents are proud or ashamed of the president. Those under 50 were proud, while those over 50, who have of course the longest experienced sense of American history, were ashamed.
We all know the reasons behind the numbers. The scandals that suggest poor stewardship and, in the case of the IRS, destructive political mischief. The president's signature legislation, which popularly bears his name and contains within it the heart of his political meaning, continues to wreak havoc in marketplaces and to be unpopular with the public. He is incapable of working with Congress, the worst at this crucial aspect of the job since Jimmy Carter, though Mr. Carter at least could work with the Mideast and produced the Camp David Accords. Mr. Obama has no regard for Republicans and doesn't like to be with Democrats. Internationally, small states that have traditionally been the locus of trouble (the Mideast) are producing more of it, while large states that have been more stable in their actions (Russia, China) are newly, starkly aggressive.
That's a long way of saying nothing's working.
Which I'm sure you've noticed.
But I'm not sure people are noticing the sheer strangeness of how the president is responding to the lack of success around him. He once seemed a serious man. He wrote books, lectured on the Constitution. Now he seems unserious, frivolous, shallow. He hangs with celebrities, plays golf. His references to Congress are merely sarcastic: "So sue me." "They don't do anything except block me. And call me names. It can't be that much fun."
In a truly stunning piece in early June, Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein interviewed many around the president and reported a general feeling that events have left him—well, changed. He is "taking fuller advantage of the perquisites of office," such as hosting "star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight." He travels, leaving the White House more in the first half of 2014 than any other time of his presidency except his re-election year. He enjoys talking to athletes and celebrities, not grubby politicians, even members of his own party. He is above it all. On his state trip to Italy in the spring, he asked to spend time with "interesting Italians." They were wealthy, famous. The dinner went for four hours. The next morning his staff were briefing him for a "60 Minutes" interview about Ukraine and health care. "One aide paraphrased Obama's response: 'Just last night I was talking about life and art, big interesting things, and now we're back to the minuscule things on politics.'''
Minuscule? Politics is his job.
When the crisis in Ukraine escalated in March, White House aides wondered if Mr. Obama should cancel a planned weekend golf getaway in Florida. He went. At the "lush Ocean Reef Club," he reportedly told his dinner companions: "I needed this. I needed the golf. I needed to laugh. I needed to spend time with friends."
You get the impression his needs are pretty important in his hierarchy of concerns.
***
This is a president with 2½ years to go who shows every sign of running out the clock. Normally in a game you run out the clock when you're winning. He's running it out when he's losing.
All this is weird, unprecedented. The president shows no sign—none—of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They'd be questioning what they're doing wrong, changing tack. They'd be ordering frantic aides to meet and come up with what to change, how to change it, how to find common ground not only with Congress but with the electorate.
Instead he seems disinterested, disengaged almost to the point of disembodied. He is fatalistic, passive, minimalist. He talks about hitting "singles" and "doubles" in foreign policy.
"The world seems to disappoint him," says The New Yorker's liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick.
What kind of illusions do you have to have about the world to be disappointed when it, and its players, act aggressively or foolishly? Presidents aren't supposed to have those illusions, and they're not supposed to check out psychologically when their illusions are shattered.
***
Barack Obama doesn't seem to care about his unpopularity, or the decisions he's made that have not turned out well. He doesn't seem concerned. A guess at the reason: He thinks he is right about his essential policies. He is steering the world toward not relying on America. He is steering America toward greater dependence on and allegiance to government. He is creating a more federally controlled, Washington-centric nation that is run and organized by progressives. He thinks he's done his work, set America on a leftward course, and though his poll numbers are down now, history will look back on him and see him as heroic, realistic, using his phone and pen each day in spite of unprecedented resistance. He is Lincoln, scorned in his time but loved by history.
He thinks he is in line with the arc of history, that America, for all its stops and starts, for all the recent Supreme Court rulings, has embarked in the long term on governmental and cultural progressivism. Thus in time history will have the wisdom to look back and see him for what he really was: the great one who took every sling and arrow, who endured rising unpopularity, the first black president and the only one made to suffer like this.
That's what he's doing by running out the clock: He's waiting for history to get its act together and see his true size.
He's like someone who's constantly running the movie "Lincoln" in his head. It made a great impression on him, that movie. He told Time magazine, and Mr. Remnick, how much it struck him. President Lincoln of course had been badly abused in his time. Now his greatness is universally acknowledged. But if Mr. Obama read more of Lincoln, he might notice Lincoln's modesty, his plain ways, his willingness every day to work and negotiate with all who opposed him, from radical abolitionists who thought him too slow to supporters of a negotiated peace who thought him too martial. Lincoln showed respect for others. Those who loved him and worked for him thought he showed too much. He was witty and comical but not frivolous and never shallow. He didn't say, "So sue me." He never gave up trying to reach agreement and resolution.
It is weird to have a president who has given up. So many young journalists diligently covering this White House, especially those for whom it is their first, think what they're seeing is normal.
It is not. It is unprecedented and deeply strange. And, because the world is watching and calculating, unbelievably dangerous.
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2) Greg Norman's New Aluminum Play Toy!
Greg Norman's Yacht... Greg Norman, 'The Shark', recently took delivery of his new toy, named 'Aussie
Rules', which he helped design.
At 69.5 meters (228 feet) in length, it's the world's largest aluminum and composite
private yacht.
He had it built for only $70 million dollars. The company meant to build it for him 'at cost' in return for the excellent advertising of having him as an owner, but they actually lost money on it. When he first cruised into Sydney Harbor, onlookers remarked, 'It's massive! Nearly three times the size of the ferries in the Harbor!' In addition to being opulent, it is also built for Jacques Cousteau type fun and exploration! There is onboard diving equipment for 30 people, including a decompression
chamber and two (2) huge compressors. Dives of all types can be accomplished by operating the Nitrox Mixing Panel onboard, enabling each guest's air tank to be
customized with a mixture of gases.
To get people out to those choice dive spots, or maybe just for having a bit of a
splash, the following additional 'small' boats are kept onboard: 42-foot Custom Built 'Game Fisher' can be launched and retrieved from the deck;
perfect for a 4-person overnight fishing expedition it has a gourmet galley for cooking up the catch while it's still fresh;
30-foot SeeVee for a quick afternoon fishing trip; 22-Foot Novurania Equator with a meager 800 horsepower so you can get to the
best diving sites ahead of everyone else; it has beach landing capability as well;
(2) 18-Foot Hewes Bonefishes for those special occasions when Greg and a close
friend may wish to maneuver over the sand flats in Key West, Florida;
13-Foot Narwhal Rescue Boat, in case someone falls off one of the other boats. And finally, (4) Yamaha Wave Runners!!! Now, after reading this don't you wish you had taken your golf game more seriously!!!!!!
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2) Six Suspects Arrested over Murder of Arab Teen
by Tova Dvorin
Police have arrested six suspects in the murder of 16-year-old Arab teen Mohammed Abu-Khder.
The suspects, among them several minors, are believed to be Jewish, appearing to back suggestions
earlier today that police had made significant headway in their investigation, and that they were almost
certain the motive was "nationalistic".
"We have begun to put together the pieces of the puzzle, and 70-80% of the background information
indicates [the crime is] nationalistic," a police source claiming to be part of the central investigation told
Walla News.
"But research has failed to understand what happened during critical moments," he added, referring to
the two-hour window between the boy's alleged abduction in Shuafat and his body being found in the
Jerusalem Forest.
Almost immediately prior to the arrests, a police source told Channel 2 that arrests in the case were
"imminent" and could be carried out later in the day.
Rioting throughout Jerusalem erupted last week after rumors circulated that 16-year-old Mohammed
Abu-Khder's murder was an act of Jewish "revenge" over the abduction and murder of three Israeli teens
Naftali Frenkel (16), Gilad Sha'ar (16) and Eyal Yifrah (19).
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, as well as some in the international media, have
since repeated those claims as fact. Israeli leaders - including the mayor of Jerusalem and Prime
Minister Netanyahu - rushed to condemn the murder, despite the lack of clear evidence suggesting that
the murder was an act of nationalistic revenge.
Conflicting testimonies from the boy's own parents about an alleged attempt to abduct their younger son
some time before have raised further questions about the possibility of criminal or some other motive.
Meanwhile more footage has emerged from CCTV cameras near the scene of the crime, purporting to
show the murder suspects approaching Mohammed before kidnapping him.
[youtube:194857]
Previous footage, taken from across the street, was obtained late last week by The Telegraph; but while
those images were far harder to make out, the latest film is somewhat clearer - though not clear enough
to make out the killers' identities.
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