The second reason we must wait is because N Korea, though starving, possesses nuclear bombs and a potential ability to send them to California. It's the old "let 'em eat cake'" thing!
The third reason we must wait, and probably the most important one, is we are totally unprepared for cyber war or any attack on our freedoms because we are too busy inviting every one to come and join the party called "Come To America Illegally and Reap The Benefits."
Finally, I am confident when Obama does respond it will be appropriate based on how he has responded to all prior pokes in the eye America constantly receives from adversaries.
Meanwhile, as is Obama's favorite tack he blamed Sony, and well he should, for being wimps - takes one to know one as they say!
And now for some humor: http://www.safeshare.tv/w/
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I have always maintained when a pendulum swings too far physics and nature will cause it to reverse.
The problem is that all too often it never totally returns from where it began and maybe that is a good thing.
Because of Obama's extreme policies and far left leanings it is likely Progressiveness may have peaked; reached its zenith.
America is a centrist nation and Americans have an overall good heart. Radical solutions go against our grain.
Most Americans believe in social justice for all our peoples and we are not opposed to immigration. We simply do not want to see the government tread heavy handed, affront personal dignity and seek outcomes either unobtainable or unrealistic and self-destructive. As for immigration we must first stop illegals entering our nation while acting concurrently to allow those 'illegals' here to earn their right to citizenship and if citizenship is worth something, as it appears they believe it is, there must be reasonable penalties for their illegality.
Being good hearted and sloppy sentimentalists, Americans resent, as well they should, being taken advantage of and the recent budget, as with all in the past,are chock full of theft by the preferred of tax payer sweat. The budget is an affront by elected officials , a naked display of their arrogance and smacks of total fiscal irresponsibility.
Our national debt, both on and off balance sheet, is not only a disgrace but also is a threat to our future and signifies contempt for our progeny.
Americans also believe it is the primal responsibility of government to protect both its citizens and national interests. That does not mean we become Jingoists, ready to fight at every slight but we do want a president who tells it like it is, presents a sensible plan of where he wants to take us and then follows through within the constraints and bounds of our Constitution.
Finally, Americans expect to benefit from their labor and understand Capitalism, with all its faults, is superior to any other economic system. Freedom, respect for the law and even handed justice are the bulwarks upon which our nation was founded! We resent those seeking to erode these God Given rights.
America is not perfect. America has much to atone for in its dealings with others. That said, there is no nation on earth that can match our achievements and the lengths we have gone to and sacrifices we have endured to make this world a better place.
Therefore, I continue to measure all past presidents and will future ones, regardless of party, against these subjective and objective metrics and in far too many instances I continue to find Obama lacking and failing on most all fronts. (See 1 below.)
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How some Cuban dissidents view Obama's move.
Though I agree with most everything they have said I also believe, along with Rand Paul, that American engagement will make an impact and it can always be withdrawn as a point of leverage..
My problem is that Obama extracted nothing and , once again, gave everything. Cuba is basically bankrupt and except for tourism has little hard currency with which to engage in trade and necessities for it people. I believe Obama was too anxious to be make an announcement.
Secondly, he kept his cards totally to himself and failed to even inform his own senior party members accomplishing his goal with his pen and cell phone. Establishing diplomatic relationships with a Communist nation begs for bi-partisan engagement.(See 2 below.)'
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Killing police has now left blood on the hands of those whose words have brought this tragedy about - New York's mayor and Obama's White House hustler, Al Sharpton.
Watching Al Sharpton shake down the woman in charge of Sony was a pathetic display of weakness on her part and hypocrisy on his.
That any president would get in bed with this buffoon is a blight on presidential judgement and ethical behaviour. (See 3 below.)
Dick
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1) Next Up in America: The Liberal Retreat
The Obama administration may represent “Peak Left” in American politics. As a result, what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets.
As the United States staggers toward the seventh year of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House, a growing disquiet permeates the ranks of the American left. After six years of the most liberal President since Jimmy Carter, the nation doesn’t seem to be asking for a second helping. Even though the multiyear rollout of Obamacare was carefully crafted to put all the popular features up front, delaying less popular changes into the far future, the program remains unpopular. Trust in the fairness and competence of government is pushing toward new lows in the polls, even though the government is now in the hands of forward-looking, progressive Democrats rather than antediluvian Gopers.
For liberals, these are bleak times of hollow victories (Obamacare) and tipping points that don’t tip. For examples of the latter, think of Sandy Hook, the horrific massacre in Connecticut that Democrats and liberals everywhere believed would finally push the American public toward gun control. Two years later, polls show more Americans than ever before think it’s more important to protect gun access than to promote gun control.
Sandy Hook isn’t the only example. There was the latest 2014 IPCC report on climate change that was going to end the debate once and for all. The chances for legislative action on climate change in the new Congress: zero or less. There was Ferguson and the Garner videotape showing the fatal chokehold, both of which set off a wave of protests but seem unlikely to change public attitudes about the police. There was the Senate Intelligence Committee “torture report” that was going to settle the issue of treatment of detainees. Again, the polls are rolling in suggesting that the public remains exactly where it was: supportive of “torture” under certain circumstances. And of course there was the blockbuster Rolling Stone article on campus rape at UVA, the story that, before it abruptly collapsed, was going to cement public support for the Obama administration’s aggressive attempt to federalize the treatment of sexual harassment on campuses around the country.
In all of these cases, liberals got what, from a liberal perspective, appeared to be conclusive evidence that long cherished liberal policy ideas were as correct as liberals have always thought they were. In all of these cases the establishment media conformed to the liberal narrative, inundating the airwaves and flooding the cyberverse with the liberal line. Some of the stories, like the UVA rape story, collapsed. Some, like the Ferguson story, became so complex and nuanced that some of their initial political salience diminished. But even when, as with Ferguson, other follow-up stories seem to reinforce the initial liberal take (the Garner case, for example), the public still doesn’t seem to accept the liberal line or draw the inferences that liberals want it to draw. It’s becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that many Americans will continue to disagree with many liberal policy prescriptions no matter what.
Shell-shocked liberals are beginning to grasp some inconvenient truths. No gun massacre is horrible enough to change Americans’ ideas about gun control. No UN Climate Report will get a climate treaty through the U.S. Senate. No combination of anecdotal and statistical evidence will persuade Americans to end their longtime practice of giving police officers extremely wide discretion in the use of force. No “name and shame” report, however graphic, from the Senate Intelligence Committee staff will change the minds of the consistent majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they believe that torture is justifiable under at least some circumstances. No feminist campaign will convince enough voters that the presumption of innocence should not apply to those accused of rape.
These are not the only issues in which, from a left Democratic point of view, the country is overrun with zombies and vampires: policy ideas that Democrats thought had been killed but still restlessly roam the earth. The finale of the George W. Bush presidency was, for many Democrats, conclusive evidence that conservative ideas just don’t work. The post 9/11 Bush foreign policy led to two long and unhappy wars. America had lost the trust of its allies without defeating its enemies. At home, the Bush tax cuts led to an exploding deficit, and the orgy of deregulation (admittedly, much of it dating from the Clinton years) led to the greatest financial crash since World War II and the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“Could a set of political ideas be more discredited?” liberals ask. The foreign policy failures of the Bush years, they believe, should have killed conservative ideology about America’s role in the world, and the financial crisis, they are certain, should have driven a stake through the heart of conservative economic doctrine. Yet:
Here we are, six years into the Age of Obama, and the Tea Party is alive and Occupy is dead. The Republicans swept the midterm elections both nationally and at the state level—and Hillary Clinton appears more interested in conciliating Wall Street than in fighting it, and more interested in building bridges to conservative foreign policy thinkers than in continuing the Obama foreign policy. (And with even Jimmy Carter lambasting Obama’s Middle East policy as too weak, and the President committing to new troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not clear that even President Obama wants to stay the course.)
Here we are, six years into the Age of Obama, and the Tea Party is alive and Occupy is dead. The Republicans swept the midterm elections both nationally and at the state level—and Hillary Clinton appears more interested in conciliating Wall Street than in fighting it, and more interested in building bridges to conservative foreign policy thinkers than in continuing the Obama foreign policy. (And with even Jimmy Carter lambasting Obama’s Middle East policy as too weak, and the President committing to new troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not clear that even President Obama wants to stay the course.)
The liberal rout at the level of state and local politics is even more alarming. A wave of Republican Governors in blue Midwestern states (Walker in Wisconsin, Snyder in Michigan, plus the Dem-crushing Kasich in purple Ohio) and large GOP gains in state legislatures across the country point to a widespread reaction against liberal ideas, and lend credence to the idea that, even accounting for the GOP-skewed electorate in off-year elections, the country as a whole is drifting to the right.
For some, the response is to turn on Obama. He’s not a real liberal at all, some disillusioned liberals say: he’s a technocrat, a trimmer, an elitist, and an inept politician. Some of that is true; President Obama is a limousine liberal, not a lunch-bucket populist. And, despite all those comparisons to Lincoln that swooning liberals made back in 2008, he’s neither a particularly persuasive speaker nor an effective political operative. He is more professor than politician, and more of a natural legislator than a gifted executive.
But to blame Obama for the crisis of the liberal left is unpersuasive. It was the liberal left who fell hardest for him, who praised him to the skies and who stuck with him longer than anybody else. Even today, Obama’s strongest backing comes from two of the most liberal ingredients in the American melting pot: blacks and Jews. And, from a practical point of view, it is almost inconceivable, despite the cries of “Run, Elizabeth, Run!” emanating from the gentry left, that someone more liberal than President Obama will be sent to the Oval Office anytime soon. It took the unique circumstances of two wars and a financial crash to open a path to the White House for Barack Obama; absent similar circumstances, successful candidates are likely to come from his right for the foreseeable future.
In that sense the Obama administration may represent “Peak Left” in American politics, and what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets. America is unlikely to go farther to the left than it went in the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crash, and while that wasn’t anywhere near enough of a shift for left-leaning Democrats, the country has already moved on.
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2) Cuban dissident leaders, in Cuba, react to President Obama's announcement to normalize relations with Castro's dictatorship:
"Sadly, President Obama made the wrong decision. The freedom and democracy of the Cuban people will not be achieved through these benefits that he's giving -- not to the Cuban people -- but to the Cuban government. The Cuban government will only take advantage to strengthen its repressive machinery, to repress civil society, its people and remain in power."-- Berta Soler, leader of The Ladies in White."[Alan Gross] was not arrested for what he did, but for what could be gained from his arrest. He was simply bait and they were aware of it from the beginning... Castroism has won, though the positive result is that Alan Gross has left alive the prison that threatened to become his tomb." -- Yoani Sanchez, Cuban blogger and independent journalist, 14ymedio."The Cuban people are being ignored in this secret conversation, in this secret agreement that we learned today. The reality of my country is there is just one party with all the control and with the state security controlling the whole society. If this doesn’t change, there’s no real change in Cuba. Not even with access to Internet. Not even when Cuban people can travel more than two years ago. Not even that is a sign of the end of the totalitarianism in my country." --Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of murdered
Christian Liberation Movement leader, Oswaldo Paya.
"[Obama's announcement] is horrible and disregarding the opinion of [Cuban] civil society sends a bad message. The acceptance of neo-Castroism in Cuba will mean greater support for authoritarianism in the region and, as a consequence, human rights will be relegated to a secondary role." -- Antonio Rodiles, head of Estado de Sats."Alan Gross was used as a tool by the Castro regime to coerce the United States. Obama was not considerate of Cuban citizens and of the civil society that is facing this tyrannical regime. In Miami, Obama promised that he would consult Cuba measures with civil society and the non-violent opposition. Obviously, this didn't happen. That is a fact, a reality. He didn't consider Cuba's democrats. The betrayal of Cuba's democrats has been consummated." -- Guillermo Fariñas, former Sakharov Prize recipient.
"The Obama Administration has ceded before Castro's dictatorship. Nothing has changed. The jails remain filled, the government represents only one family, repression continues, civil society is not recognized and we have no right to assemble or protest... The measures that the government of the United States has implemented today, to ease the embargo and establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, will in no way benefit the Cuban people. The steps taken will strengthen the Castro regime's repression against human rights activists and increase its resources, so the security forces can keep harassing and repressing civil society." -- Angel Moya, former political prisoner of the Black Spring (2003).
"We are in total disagreement with what has transpired today. It's a betrayal of those who within Cuba have opposed the regime in order to achieve definitive change for the good of all Cubans." -- Felix Navarro, former political prisoner and co-head of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU).
"It's discomforting that the accounts of the Castro regime can grow, as the first step will be more effective repression and a rise in the level of corruption." -- Jose Daniel Ferrer, former political prisoner and co-head of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU)
"This is a betrayal that leaves the democratic opposition defenseless. Obama has allied himself with the oppressors and murderers of our people." -- Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antunez," former political prisoner and head of the National Resistance Front.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3 Bernard Kerik: De Blasio, Sharpton 'Have Blood on Their Hands'"I feel as though I have been abandoned on the battlefield." -- Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, former Cuban political prisoner and U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Newsmax that Saturday's execution-style shooting of two uniformed police officers was ultimately encouraged by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Rev. Al Sharpton — and "they have blood on their hands."
"de Blasio, Sharpton and all those who encouraged this anti-cop, racist mentality all have blood on their hands," he said. "They have blood on their hands."The two officers were shot about 3 p.m. while sitting in their marked car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn by a man identified as Ismaaiyl Brinsley.
He wounded his girlfriend in a shooting in Baltimore before driving to New York and ambushing the officers, according to the New York Daily News.
Brinsley, who reportedly belonged to a gang, later killed himself on a crowded Brooklyn subway platform as police closed in on him. He bragged on his Instagram page just hours before that he wanted to kill police officers, the Daily News reports.
Investigators said that Brinsley was avenging the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown by killing the officers.
Kerik told Newsmax that the officers' deaths resulted from a climate created by de Blasio, Sharpton and other New York City officials.
"This guy's intent — based on that Instagram post — was retribution for Eric Garner and Michael Brown," he told Newsmax. "The people who encouraged these protests — you had peaceful protesters who were screaming 'kill the cops' — the so-called peaceful protesters.
"Who was encouraging these protesters? De Blasio, Sharpton and other elected officials and community leaders. They encouraged this mentality. They encouraged this behavior.
"They encouraged it — and these two cops are dead because of people like them," Kerik said. "They don't owe the cops an apology.
"An apology isn't good enough. They have blood on their hands."
Later, Kerik called for peaceful citizen demonstrations over the deaths of the officers.
"What I want to see is a day of outrage," he told Jeanine Pirro on her Fox News program. "I want to see protests for the two cops that are lying dead tonight.
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