Where are the 'booties?' After The Obama Administration's Many Scandals ---
.PNG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Obama told us the real war was in Afghanistan not Iraq. He is now leaving Afghanistan after withdrawing from Iraq and consequently we are fighting radical Islamists (ISIS) who, Obama told us, were defeated and are now protecting Assad in Syria after he tortured hundreds of thousands of his own people. Obama is doing so by defying history - believing you can win a war, he will not call a war, solely from the air!
How can you have confidence in a president whose buck stops on the golf course, has not personally attended more than 40% of his intelligent briefings and never served in the military he now leads etc.?
You voted him in twice. Any second thoughts? If not, what will it take?
===
.PNG&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*)
Blake, suck it up, you have an older and beautiful sister who wants to dress like a princess!
===
Herb Keinon is a sound op ed analyst. He has provided insight, in this article, about the differences between Netanyahu and Obama. (See 1 and 1a below.)
===
Are we in a no win situation with a president steering the wagon who is clueless, confused, incompetent and not up to the job of resolving the mess he helped to get us into but who is clear about one thing - it is always the fault of everyone else?
Click on:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/30/the_nation_building_trap_islamic_state_iraq_syria
===
Like Pelosi said - we had to re-train the Iraqi military to find out whether they can fight.
GW thought Democracy would prevail in Iraq but voters elected a corrupt and stubborn sectarian leader who undid the effect of all our previous efforts and expenditures to turn them into a competent military force.
Now, I venture to say, they are likely to fail in defending their own capital. (See 2 below.)
===
Netanyahu tells it like it is and Obama fails to see it the way it is. (See 3 below.)
Krauthammer tries to help Obama understand the roots of Islamic barbarism! Good luck, Charles! (See 3a below.)
===
When I wrote what I did about Harry Reid and Democrats manipulating contestants in order to hold onto control of The Senate, I was unaware The Wall Street Journal would report as much today.
A vote against Michelle Nunn, charming as she may be, is justified if only to rid government of this underhanded politician who has enriched himself in the service of the people.
I had a personal chat with Jack Kingston yesterday and I still maintain he would have made the better candidate against Nunn and I told Jack as much but Georgia voters chose otherwise so I will vote for the man who nudged out Jack by a few thousand votes because I detest Harry Reid.
It is sad indeed that Georgia, politically speaking, remains controlled by the overwhelming numbers of people living in Atlanta.
Jack served his district well, grew in stature and respect, was never involved in any embarrassing episode and truly deserved the opportunity to be Georgia''s next Senator based on experience but coming from Savannah did not give him the recognition leverage he needed to overcome the fact that Atlanta remains the tail wagging the Georgia Bull Dog! (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
Are we in a no win situation with a president steering the wagon who is clueless, confused, incompetent and not up to the job of resolving the mess he helped to get us into but who is clear about one thing - it is always the fault of everyone else?
Click on:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/30/the_nation_building_trap_islamic_state_iraq_syria
===
Like Pelosi said - we had to re-train the Iraqi military to find out whether they can fight.
GW thought Democracy would prevail in Iraq but voters elected a corrupt and stubborn sectarian leader who undid the effect of all our previous efforts and expenditures to turn them into a competent military force.
Now, I venture to say, they are likely to fail in defending their own capital. (See 2 below.)
===
Netanyahu tells it like it is and Obama fails to see it the way it is. (See 3 below.)
Krauthammer tries to help Obama understand the roots of Islamic barbarism! Good luck, Charles! (See 3a below.)
===
When I wrote what I did about Harry Reid and Democrats manipulating contestants in order to hold onto control of The Senate, I was unaware The Wall Street Journal would report as much today.
A vote against Michelle Nunn, charming as she may be, is justified if only to rid government of this underhanded politician who has enriched himself in the service of the people.
I had a personal chat with Jack Kingston yesterday and I still maintain he would have made the better candidate against Nunn and I told Jack as much but Georgia voters chose otherwise so I will vote for the man who nudged out Jack by a few thousand votes because I detest Harry Reid.
It is sad indeed that Georgia, politically speaking, remains controlled by the overwhelming numbers of people living in Atlanta.
Jack served his district well, grew in stature and respect, was never involved in any embarrassing episode and truly deserved the opportunity to be Georgia''s next Senator based on experience but coming from Savannah did not give him the recognition leverage he needed to overcome the fact that Atlanta remains the tail wagging the Georgia Bull Dog! (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Politics And Diplomacy
Obama-Netanyahu: It’s not personal
Differences about Iran, Islamic State and the Palestinians are real and deep and rooted in vastly different governing philosophies.
NEW YORK – Within minutes of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s meeting in the Oval Office Wednesday with US President Barack Obama, their second this year, there will be those who will analyze their body language.
Did they look tense or happy in each other’s presence? Were their arms folded or open? Were their legs crossed or straight down? Did they smile? Did they engage in banter? Did Obama looked pained that Netanyahu dined two nights ago with Sheldon Adelson, the main backer of Obama’s challenger, Mitt Romney, in the 2012 elections? And all that will be done in an attempt to analyze to what degree the two leaders – determined by destiny to work together – like or dislike each other. All this will be done to make it personal.
Although personal relationships are important at highest levels, just as they are in everyday life, the differences between Netanyahu and Obama over a wide range of issues – from Iran, to the Palestinians, to seeing Hamas as the same as Islamic State, or not seeing them as such – are not personal. These are differences stemming from vastly different animating political philosophies.
Were Obama an Israeli, he would most likely vote for Meretz. Were Netanyahu an American citizen, he would probably be a Republican governor somewhere. Those are real differences.
It’s not personal, it’s philosophical.
And those different philosophies came out clear in the speeches the two men gave over the last week at the UN General Assembly.
Obama’s speech, though tough on Islamic State, was shot through with hope, with looking for causes for the rise of extremism and wanting to treat those causes, careful to say that you can’t judge all of Islam by a few extremists.
Netanyahu’s speech was black and white, almost Reaganesque in his good-and-evil take on the world: The Islamic radicals, all Islamic radicals, are evil and strive for world domination.
They are, in his view, the new Nazis – a way of characterizing them that would never cross Obama’s lips.
The Islamic extremists Obama mentioned are Islamic State, al-Qaida, Boko Haram. No mention, in his speech, of the two radical Islamic groups that are Israel’s scourge: Hamas and Hezbollah.
Likewise, not for Obama is Netanyahu’s comparing Islamic State’s goals with the already existing Islamic state of Iran. No, for Obama there is still room for America to pursue a diplomatic resolution with Tehran.
“My message to Iran’s leaders and people is simple: Do not let this opportunity pass,” he said. “We can reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.”
Netanyahu’s message to the world and to Obama, as articulated in his speech to the UN Monday, was that Iran is simply trying to “bamboozle” the world into lifting sanctions so it can go on pursuing its ambition of becoming a nuclear threshold state.
And then there is the issue of the Palestinians, an issue Obama discussed directly in his address to the world body.
“Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace.”
The violence engulfing the region today, he said, “has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza.”
“So long as I am president, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.”
There was nothing in his comments about a new approach – after 20 years of trying direct negotiations toward two states that led nowhere – about it perhaps being time for a new paradigm.
Netanyahu talked about this new paradigm in very general terms, of an amorphous partnership with moderate Arab states that could then lead to peace with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu seems to have ditched the Oslo approach, as has Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Obama still has not.
Those differences – about Iran, about Islamic State, about the Palestinians – are real and deep and rooted in vastly different governing philosophies, in vastly different ways the two men look at the world. It’s about that, not about whether they like each other.
1b) PRESIDENT OBAMA, PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU TO MEET AS IRAN DEADLINE LOOMS
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet for the first time since a rash of civilian casualties during Israel's summer war with Hamas heightened tensions between two leaders who have long had a prickly relationship.
Much of Wednesday's Oval Office discussion is expected to focus on another delicate issue: U.S.-led nuclear talks with Iran. With a deadline for reaching a final agreement less than two months away, all sides say significant gaps remain.
Netanyahu has long cautioned the U.S. and the international community that Iran is barreling toward a bomb and using diplomatic openings as a stalling tactic. The Islamic republic contends its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
The Israeli leader arrives in Washington following meetings at the United Nations, where he delivered a blistering speech accusing Hamas of committing war crimes by using Palestinian civilians as human shields during the 50-day Gaza war that ended Aug. 26. His speech was a response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' assertion that Israel had carried out a “war of genocide” during the Gaza fighting.
Israel launched thousands of airstrikes against what it said were Hamas-linked targets in the dense Gaza Strip, resulting in more than 2,100 Palestinian deaths, the vast majority civilians, according to the United Nations. More than 70 Israelis were also killed.
The civilian death toll in Gaza deeply frustrated U.S. officials and resulted in more biting public condemnations of Israel's actions than are typical from the Obama administration.
In his speech to the U.N., Netanyahu sought to equate Hamas with the violent Islamic State militants the U.S. is seeking to degrade in Iraq and Syria.
“ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree,” he said, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms. He added, “When it comes to its ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS, and ISIS is Hamas.”
Obama and Netanyahu last met in March while the Israelis and Palestinians were still engaged in a U.S.-mediated peace process. The discussions collapsed without a peace accord.
Both Netanyahu and Abbas appear to have abandoned any hope of reviving peace talks, though each is pressing separate diplomatic initiatives. Netanyahu has called for bringing an alliance of moderate Arab states into the peace process, while Abbas has said he'll appeal to the U.N. Security Council to back Palestinian independence.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Todd Beamon
Islamic State militants are reportedly within a mile of Baghdad despite battling Iraqi forces and U.S.-led airstrikes, and there is "immense fear among everybody," the vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq said Tuesday.
"We are at a crisis point," Canon Andrew White, vicar of St George's Church in Baghdad, told Sky News. "People know ISIS are coming nearer."
The Islamic State is also known as ISIS.
White's work is supported by the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, which said late Monday in a Facebook posting: "The Islamic State are now less than 2km away from entering Baghdad."
"They said it could never happen, and now it almost has. Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi army could do," the posting said, referring to President Barack Obama.
"Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very very little," the posting said.
He told Sky News that the U.S.-led airstrikes against ISIS are doing little more than killing civilians.
"People are being killed by the attacks of the coalition," he said.
"This is horrendous," he said about the Islamic State's advance into Iraq's capital city. "We have civilians being killed, yet [the Islamic State] are moving toward Baghdad."
Renewed fighting has also occurred in such central Iraqi cities as Baquba and Ramadi, Sky News reports, as ISIS fighters appear to have advanced within 3 miles of Kobani, a critical border town in Syria, despite the airstrikes.
The reports come as the White House remains in damage-control mode after Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials had underestimated the ISIS threat.
The suggestion angered congressional Republicans, leading Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to charge that "this was not an intelligence community failure, but a failure by policymakers to confront the threat."
Obama had said:
"Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria." He was referring to James Clapper, director of national intelligence.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest sought to clarify Obama's remarks, noting that he was not blaming anyone as the U.S. sought global cooperation in the airstrikes that seek to weaken ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
"That is not what the president's intent was," Earnest said Tuesday. "What the president was trying to make clear" was "how difficult it is to predict the will of security forces that are based in another country to fight."
In his Sky News interview, White said of Baghdad: "I've never known the city like it is at the moment."
"Streets which are usually choc-a-bloc with traffic, cars and people are almost empty. People are too fearful to even leave their homes."
He said that his church most likely would be "very high up" on the Islamic State's target list and that "I must be at the top of the list."
White told Sky News that one Iraqi soldier told him that if he was confronted by ISIS he would "take off his uniform and run," and that he was in the army "because he needs the money."
"This, sadly, is the kind of attitude of so many of these forces who should be coming to our aid and help," he said.
According to The Daily Mail, airstrikes over the weekend appeared to have halted ISIS militants' advance at Ameriyat al-Falluja, a small city about 18 miles south of Fallujah and 40 miles west of Baghdad.
But most of the fighters were undaunted — and many are making their way to the suburbs of Baghdad, the Daily Mail reports.
In a Facebook posting earlier Monday, White said: "Over 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed by ISIS yesterday, things are so bad."
"All the military airstrikes are doing nothing," he added. "If ever we needed your prayers, it is now."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) In Praise of Benjamin Netanyahu
By Roger L. Simon
In case you non-Jews haven’t noticed, we Jews bicker a lot. Some of us even have bad things to say about Albert Einstein. A fair number of us have bad things to say about Karl Marx. Or about Milton Friedman — to go the other way. (Yes, I think Friedman was a lot smarter than Marx.)
So it should be no surprise that Benjamin Netanyahu is only intermittently popular in his home country. At the height of the recent Gaza war, he was a hero on the level of King Solomon, but then, after things quieted down with a relatively indeterminate conclusion, he was, well, just another pol.
But he’s not.
This man, whatever his failings, is better able to articulate the global situation than any political leader currently in a position of power in any country by yards. In fact, virtually no one else is even attempting to do it. (Tony Blair did for a while before he turned, but he’s not in Bibi’s league.)
Netanyahu may not be Churchill when it comes to courage, but he is Churchill, or close, when it comes to a precise mastery of the English language, ironic since he is the prime minister of a Hebrew-speaking nation. He is able to tell the truth about the important issues, when all others, including, notably, our president and secretary of State, are prevaricating or spinning, trying desperately not to offend the reprehensible, and he did it again the other day at the United Nations. (Full text here.) He told the truth about radical Islam to a half-empty house whose Moslem delegates had left and whose remaining attendees sat there terrified of agreeing publicly with the Israeli prime minister lest some imam or dopey liberal NGO accuse of them of Islamophobia. He made that speech at an institution that has institutionalized anti-Semitism, not world peace or even basic common sense, as its modus operandi, as its very raison d’être.
3a) CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER DEFINES ISLAMIC STATE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA
Charles Krauthammer, a popular columnist and author, has something to say about President Barack Obama’s position on Islamic terrorism. For certain, Krauthammer argues that the president denies reality and facts by refusing to identify “the Islamist character” of terrorist “barbarism.” This comes after the president’s praise for a cleric who advocated a fatwa against Americans. Krauthammer spoke on Friday’s broadcast of “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
“This is consistent in this administration to downplay the Islamist character of the barbarism that we see around the world … he’s afraid that if he acknowledges the obvious reality people will associate Islam with this barbarism and make them equivalent whereas nobody is asking him to do that.
Charles Krauthammer defined what the president meant about violent extremism. “He calls it ‘violent extremism.’ He used the phrase three times at the UN as if the violence that we see around the world in Nigeria, in Mali, in Libya, in Kenya, in Somalia, in Yemen, in, of course, Syria, Iraq, in Pakistan. As if all of these by an amazing coincidence are perpetrated in the name of Islam. Of course the majority of Muslims are peaceful. But to deny the roots of this ideology in a great religion is to deny reality and to intellectually and morally disarm those who want to fight it. If you can’t name the enemy, you don’t want to identify the enemy, you can’t correctly fight the enemy. For God sakes, even the United Arab Emirates called ISIS Islamic extremism, and ISIS itself calls itself the Islamic State. They proudly proclaim this, and Obama denies it.”
Those are strong words against President Obama. But it seems as if the president has begun effecting a workable strategy against the Islamic State. True, he’s been driven there by public opinion. If Obama can remain steady through future fluctuations in public opinion, his strategy might succeed.
But success will not be what he’s articulating publicly, which coincides with what Charles Krauthammer is trying to get across. Krauthammer believes that the strategy will not destroy the Islamic State. It’s more containment-plus: Expel the Islamic State from Iraq, contain it in Syria. However, Syria is another matter. Under the current strategy, the cancer will remain.
Charles Krauthammer says President Obama was right and candid to say “this war he’s renewed will take years. This struggle is generational.” But Krauthammer reminds us all that today jihadism is global, its religious and financial institutions ubiquitous, and its roots deeply sunk in a world religion of more than a billion people
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Harry Reid's Desperate Measures
In 40 years of covering national elections, I've never seen anything like this effort to keep Senate control.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at a Capitol Hill news conference, Sept. 18. MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
In Kansas, Democrats persuaded their Senate candidate, Chad Taylor, to drop out of the race against incumbent Republican Pat Roberts. Mr. Taylor was running third in polls behind Mr. Roberts and independent Greg Orman. Soon after Mr. Taylor's early-September withdrawal, Democratic lawyers went to court to keep his name off the ballot.
In Montana, after Democratic Sen. Max Baucus announced that he would not seek re-election in 2014, Democrats feared that an open seat would be an easy win for Republican Steve Daines. So Mr. Baucus resigned and went to China as U.S. ambassador. Lt. Gov. John Walsh was appointed senator. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, meanwhile, pressured another Democrat to drop out and allow Mr. Walsh to win the primary without a challenger. Mr. Walsh later quit the race in a plagiarism scandal.
All that maneuvering only begins to suggest the lengths to which Democrats are going to retain control of the Senate in the midterm election on Nov. 4. Candidate switches have happened before. Democrats replaced New Jersey Sen. Robert Torricelli, who had won the primary, with Frank Lautenberg as their candidate in 2002. But that pales next to Democratic machinations in 2014.
Republicans aren't above ruthless tactics, but in 40 years of covering national elections I've never seen anything like the extraordinary efforts of Democrats to prevent Republicans from picking up the six seats to gain Senate control.
Mr. Reid is the leading architect of the Democratic campaign and its unprecedented tactics. He has sought to protect incumbent Democrats from votes that might imperil their re-election. And he is determined to keep Republicans from demonstrating that they're not opposed to every Democratic initiative. To manage this, he has slowed Senate business to a near halt.
While TV ads with spurious claims are a regular feature of campaigns, they have become a Democratic specialty this year. In Arkansas, Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor aired a 30-second spot that accused Rep. Tom Cotton, his Republican challenger, of having "voted against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola." The ad didn't mention that once a provision Mr. Cotton opposed was removed, he voted for the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act.
Several ads that earned "four Pinocchios "—that is, deemed to be false—from Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler were produced by Mr. Reid's Senate Majority PAC. It has spent $26.2 million this year and reserved another $14.8 million in TV time. Mitch McConnell , the Senate Republican leader, doesn't have a Super PAC.
A series of Reid PAC ads zinging Rep. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana were fodder for Mr. Kessler's fact-frisking. He called one that said Mr. Cassidy, who is running against Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu , had opposed flood-insurance legislation and hurricane relief as "nonsensical" and "deceptive" and "an effort to completely mislead voters." An ad claiming that Mr. Cassidy had argued for "automatic ObamaCare registration" was full of "audaciously false claims." Still another ad said Mr. McConnell had voted to "raise his own pay four times," but neglected to cite Mr. McConnell's opposition to automatic increases and pay hikes in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Mr. Kessler noted.
Only one ad in a Senate race has been pulled off the air. It came from Democratic Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska and faulted Republican challenger Dan Sullivan, a former prosecutor, for letting a vicious criminal get a light sentence. The Ebola ad in Arkansas drew furious complaints from the Cotton camp but remained on the air until its cycle ended.
The Senate Majority PAC has also pioneered the tactic of intervening in Republican primaries to attack candidates that Democrats fear the most or want to tarnish as early as possible. Mr. Reid's group pounced on Thom Tillis in North Carolina and Mr. Sullivan in Alaska. Both won their Senate primaries. And the Senate Majority PAC ran a heavy load of ads last spring against Mr. Cotton, who didn't have a primary foe.
In setting a presidential record for fundraisers, President Obama has boosted Democratic campaigns substantially. He has spoken at 25 events for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and two for the Senate Majority PAC. Republicans have estimated that the haul from donors exceeds $40 million. Mr. Obama even squeezed at least one fundraiser into his schedule during three days at the United Nations last week.
As majority leader, Mr. Reid has shamelessly manipulated the Senate to Democratic advantage. He blocked an up-or-down vote on the Keystone XL pipeline and on repeal of ObamaCare's medical-devices tax. He split the American Jobs Act, which Mr. Obama had touted in a speech to Congress, into individual parts. To pay for it, Mr. Reid added tax increases, including the Buffett tax with its 30% minimum income-tax rate on millionaires. This insured that Republican opposition would kill the bill and thus Democrats could trumpet their favorite theme: Republicans blocked legislation to save their rich friends from higher taxes.
When bipartisan curbs on the Environmental Protection Agency's anti-coal regulations were under consideration in June, Mr. Reid shut down the process in committee. He held what was called an "all-night filibuster" on the Senate floor. It was pure issue advocacy without a bill to vote on.
The Reid strategy has made it impossible for Republicans to point to bipartisan victories in the Senate. But this has backfired against Democrats, especially those seeking re-election in red states. In sidelining popular bills, Mr. Reid has given Democrats no achievements to brag about. In six years, Mr. Begich failed to get a vote on a single amendment he proposed.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, was co-sponsor of a well-regarded energy-efficiency bill with Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. When Republicans in May sought amendments to vote on the Keystone XL pipeline and approve export of natural gas, Mr. Reid pulled the bill from the Senate floor. Ms. Shaheen was left empty-handed. She is now in a close re-election race with Republican Scott Brown .
Democrats in red states would have benefited from voting for the pipeline and the energy bill and against the medical-devices tax. Mr. Reid wouldn't let them, if only because passing bipartisan measures might have given Republicans a few useful talking points.
The efforts of Mr. Reid, President Obama and Democrats may save the party a Senate seat or two. If that occurs, their stratagems will be copied again and again, and we'll have to brace ourselves for the worst in campaigns to come. If it fails, be thankful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment