Maybe "Put-in" Will Die Laughing!

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Reading Kasparov is depressing enough  so I thought watching Carol Burnett would be a remedy: Never Aired Skit (See 1 and 1a below.)

Our hapless president met with Mr, "Put-in" who did not feel the need to engage in resetting the button. "Put- in" is on a roll and it is quite evident he enjoys rubbing our president's nose in Syrian Sand.

That is the consequence of timidity and confusion in the face of confident power.

Another day, another disaster.

There is always a price to pay and the pigeons of incompetence are coming home to roost big time.

 "Put-in" must be in his glory because everything he does is working.  His one regret must be that Obama cannot run again.  Perhaps "Put-in" will find a way to finance  Doufus' or Hilarious' campaign.  

With a little luck maybe "Put-in" will die laughing.

God may bless America but God cannot save America.  That is something he chose to leave to voters.

And

This from a very disaffected memo reader: "A former KGB officer, now Russian President, sees President Obama's weak and ineffective foreign policy and seizes an opportunity to gain a huge stronghold in the Middle East just when Russian oil reserves are at an all-time low and their economy is about to tank. He saw Obama draw a line in the sand with Syria and then cave. Putin knows Obama's pin-prick air strikes against ISIS or ISIL, the Islamist terrorists are just a waste of money and mostly ineffective. He must have been stunned when Obama referred to ISIS as the junior varsity, and proclaimed the Taliban are on the run. 

Then there was the open mic gaffe where Obama was attempting to suck up to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and proclaimed he would have more "flexibility" after his reelection, and to pass that message to incoming President Vladimir Putin. Putin likely saw that statement as weak and submissive. IMHO, if our President had not implemented his foreign policies with an apology tour, and followed with hollow words and ineffective decision making along with a willingness to lead from behind, perhaps the Russian President would feel differently. 

Both Obama and John Kerry do not have the intestinal fortitude to engage Putin in anything other than bluster. If Obama didn't have the stones to enforce his red line against Assad, how could he possibly stand up to Putin...  S------"

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I am focusing on bad humor in this memo because things are so bad even these jokes become funny. 

        NUDITY

 I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved.  She was stark  naked!  As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, 'Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt!'

  

          OPINIONS

 On the first day of  school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother.  The note read, 'The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.'

  

KETCHUP

  

A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar.  During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. 'Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now.  She's hitting the bottle.'

  

MORE NUDITY

  

A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room.  When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover.  The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, 'What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?'

  

  

  

ELDERLY

  

While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds.  She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs.  One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass.  As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, 'The tooth fairy will never believe this!'

  

DRESS-UP

  

A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party.  When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, 'Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit.''  And why not, darling?'  'You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.'

 BIBLE

  

A little boy opened the big family Bible.  He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages.  Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it.  What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.  'Mama, look what I  found,' the boy called out.  'What have you got there, dear?'   With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, 'I think it's Adam's underwear!'

 GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED: 

Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
Wrinkles don't hurt.
Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts

Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.

Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.. 

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD: 

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional...

 When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.

You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster. 

It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions...
Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

===

Dick

--------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Putin Takes a Victory Lap While Obama Watches

More chaos in Syria suits the Russian president just fine. Higher oil prices will please Moscow and Tehran.

ByGarry Kasparov

With the Middle East in chaos and a belligerent Russian regime stoking the turmoil, the dueling speeches at the United Nations on Monday by presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin might have offered new insight. What the world saw instead was entirely predictable.

Mr. Obama has already decided to continue his policy of disengagement from the Middle East, and his platitudes about cooperation and the rule of law rang hollow in the U.N.’s General Assembly hall. Of the conflict in Syria, he said, “we must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo.” But every listener was aware that Mr. Obama had no intention of backing his words with action.

Mr. Putin, speaking about an hour later in the same room, included his usual NATO-bashing and obvious lies. “We think it is an enormous mistake,” Mr. Putin said, “to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face.” He spoke of national sovereignty—which is very important to Mr. Putin, unless it’s the sovereignty of Georgia, Ukraine or another place where he wishes to meddle.

In other words, Mr. Obama’s speech was routine because he knows he will not act. Mr. Putin’s speech was routine because he knows he will act anyway.

The content of the speeches was irrelevant to Mr. Putin before he even opened his mouth. He made his first U.N. address in 10 years because looking like a big man on the international stage is the only ploy he has left to justify his rule in Russia. His devil’s bargain with the Russian people a decade ago was to provide prosperity in exchange for their giving up their rights and democracy. Now we have none of the above. Mr. Putin’s only remaining gambit is to claim that he is defending Russian greatness while surrounded by enemies (whom that he is an expert at creating). With his offensive in Ukraine sputtering along, new fronts were needed. He has found them in Syria and at the U.N.

In this light, the much-hyped private meeting between Messrs. Obama and Putin was the biggest possible prize. The only statement to come out of the meeting was that the U.S. and Russia would consider working together against Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Not that Mr. Putin cares about cooperation, as long as his goal of preserving Bashar Assad’s murderous dictatorship in Syria isn’t interfered with.

Yet the images of the two leaders together are being splashed across the Russian media as a huge triumph for Mr. Putin. The narrative, which began circulating as soon as the meeting was announced, is that not only did the valiant Mr. Putin confront and condemn the weak Mr. Obama and the evil United States, he did so in New York City, the belly of the beast itself. As soon as the first pictures were taken, the meeting became a great success for Mr. Putin, and another self-inflicted defeat for American foreign policy—and for stability and democracy in the Middle East.

No matter how well-intentioned and popular the U.S. exit from Iraq was, or how well the White House spun its concessions to Mr. Assad in 2013, the results clearly have been disastrous. A look at a map of Iraq and Syria shows that the rise of ISIS was a logical response to American abandonment of the region’s Sunnis. A group like ISIS cannot thrive without support from locals, in this case Sunnis who see no other way to defend against the Shiite forces of Iran and Syria that are slaughtering them by the hundreds of thousands.

In world affairs, as in chess, you have to play the position that’s on the board when you sit down. Criticizing George W. Bush for starting the Iraq war in 2003 does not change the fact that in 2008 there was no mass refugee crisis or massive ISIS army on the march. Support for al Qaeda had been undercut by negotiations with Sunni groups in Anbar province, a game-changing policy that was as responsible for reduced violence as the surge of new American forces.

The American exit and Mr. Obama’s refusal to deter Mr. Assad ended any possibility of security. The people had to fight, flee or die, and they are doing all three in horrific numbers. It’s important to remember that the waves of refugees reaching Europe are not running from ISIS. They are fleeing Mr. Assad—who counts on active support from Iran and now Russia.

No deal is going to change that. Iran and Russia have their own agendas in the region, and peace is not on either of them. Iran is the world’s leading state supporter of terrorism. Mr. Putin’s method of fighting the war on terror in Chechnya was carpet bombing. When that didn’t succeed, he bought off the region’s most brutal warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The continued slaughter of Sunnis in the region will draw in more support from the Saudis and more foreign fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Russia. The situation will metastasize like a cancer, which suits Mr. Putin fine. War and chaos create more enemies and more opportunities for him to look like a tough guy on Russian state TV. Iran’s regime needs conflict for similar reasons, which is why it can never give up “Death to America.” A growing war will also drive up the price of oil, a benefit that isn’t lost on Tehran or Moscow.

These consequences may be acceptable to Mr. Obama, but he cannot pretend to be ignorant of his role in creating them. I, too, would like to live in the world of diplomacy and law that Mr. Obama seems to believe we inhabit. But unfortunately we do not. Power and action still matter, and in places like Syria and Iraq you cannot have power without action.

Mr. Putin didn’t say anything new at the U.N., because he didn’t need to. He knows that he has concrete assets that are more effective than mere words. He has tanks in Ukraine, jet fighters in Syria, and Barack Obama in the White House.

Mr. Kasparov, chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, is the author of “Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped,” out next month from Public Affairs.



1a)

Obama’s War of Ideas and ISIS

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN 

When President Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Monday he advocated what he called “a different type of leadership.” What the world needed was, he said, “leadership strong enough to recognize that nations share common interests and people share a common humanity.” That’s a lovely sentiment, but was the foreign policy equivalent of a Hallmark greeting card extolling the virtues of friendship or love. Diplomacy and international cooperation have their uses and can be useful tools in the art of statecraft. But forestalling the rise of ISIS, restraining an Iran bent on regional hegemony in the Middle East or deterring an increasingly aggressive Russian government set on restoring the lost glories of the Tsarist and Soviet empires requires a kind of leadership that is rooted in the real world where the application of power counts for more than idealistic notions, futile diplomacy or empty rhetoric. But if Obama’s General Assembly speech wasn’t enough to convince America’s foes that this administration shouldn’t be taken seriously, then they were certainly put at ease by his remarks on Tuesday before a UN summit aimed at countering ISIS and other “violent extremism.” By claiming that ISIS could only be defeated by ideas rather than force, he sent the exact message that terrorist group was counting on.

President Obama never anticipated that what he once dismissed as a “JV” terror team could conquer much of Iraq and Syria. But now that it’s happened, he and other Western leaders are flummoxed by its popularity in the Muslim world. The fact that more than 30,000 foreign volunteers have flocked to Syria to join ISIS in the last year despite strenuous Western efforts to prevent their entry into the war zone is tangible evidence of the group’s appeal. But faced with that fact, Obama and his allies like David Cameron think the way to beat these Islamists is by convincing the world that freedom is better than the caliphate’s brand of religious fanaticism. The president thinks that those who speak of the need for the application of greater force are applying outdated paradigms about conflicts that have been transcended in the 21st century.

Part of the reason for this belief stems from Obama worldview’s that disdains American exceptionalism and the use of conventional force and elevates international cooperation and diplomacy to sacred status. ISIS arose in the vacuum left by the president’s feckless total withdrawal from Iraq that allowed him to campaign for re-election as the man who “ended” the war that had so troubled Americans. But the president views the Middle East solely through the prism of the domestic debate about Iraq during the last decade. He seized control of the Democratic Party from Hillary Clinton largely on the strength of his opposition to the war and now thinks it provides the answer to all debates about the use of force. As he stated again in his General Assembly speech, he believes that the expenditure of American blood and treasure in Iraq was ultimately futile. That’s a convenient view considering that he was handed a war that was won by George W. Bush (though at great cost and only after painful years of frustration that forced a switch in strategy) only to see those gains lost by his decisions. But it dovetails nicely with his belief that traditional power politics won’t work and must be replaced by more enlightened strategies.

ISIS (or ISIL as he insists as calling it) has been holding its own against Western efforts to defeat it over the last year. The president was forced by a public that was outraged by ISIS atrocities to pledge to “degrade and ultimately defeat” the terror group but his efforts to do so have made it clear that he has no real interest in doing what is necessary to actually defeat the group. But the reason why ISIS remains in control of much of the territory of two nations is not because the West has not devoted sufficient efforts to combating their ideas, such as they are. An entity that goes out of its way to publicize the most brutal sorts of public executions of its enemies or it system of sexual slavery and destruction of historic artifacts has little interest in conducting a public relations campaign aimed at generating international applause in the way that Obama conceives of wars of ideas. To the contrary, the “caliphate” seems to relish the contrast between seemingly attractive Western ideals of freedom and tolerance and their conduct.

The reason why 30,000 volunteers are risking their lives to join the televised executioners is not because they haven’t been exposed to enough broadcasts about how wicked ISIS is or how good Western ideas are. They go because ISIS is seen as the “strong horse” that is defeating the West. Indeed, the more horribly ISIS behaves, the more likely many in the Muslim world are to sympathize with it because they see the group as flouting the Western ideas Obama wants to promote with impunity.

The only way to stop that flow is to do what Obama disdains to do: beat them on the ground with troops and air power. It is true that Iraq demonstrated the difficulties of asymmetrical warfare between Western armies and terrorists. But ISIS won control of vast territories with conventional warfare, not guerilla tactics. Throwing them out of it will require its opponents to summon the will and the wherewithal to beat them in the same manner. Until that happens, volunteers will continue to flock to the banner of a cause that is rightly perceived as beating the West.

Much as he would like to pretend that the world has changed into one where traditional notions about the use of military power no longer apply, President Obama cannot talk ISIS into surrender. Only when ISIS is routed, its leaders killed and its followers scattered or imprisoned will it be possible to talk of ideas. It may be that Obama is not entirely wrong when he judges the American public as so war weary as to be unwilling to do what it takes to defeat ISIS. But so long as the leader of the free world pretends that rhetoric will conquer an entity that achieved what it has gained in the last two years with military force, ISIS knows it has nothing to worry about from America.

JONATHAN S. TOBIN IS SENIOR ONLINE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY MAGAZINE AND CHIEF POLITICAL BLOGGER AT WWW.COMMENTARYMAGAZINE.COM.

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