White House Cancels Press Briefing After Office Blows CIA Identity
By Charlie SpieringThe White House press office canceled the daily briefing with reporters Tuesday, dodging tough questions after the press office mistakenly revealed the identity of the top CIA official in Afghanistan.
The official was named in a list of participants of a meeting with President Obama during his brief trip to Afghanistan.
After journalists at the Washington Post questioned the White House decision, the press office scrambled to update the list of participants sent to the press pool.
On Tuesday afternoon, the White House surprised reporters by canceling the White House press briefing and instead scheduling a press call on President Obama’s decision to leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
That means that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney won’t have to face reporters shortly after his office made a critical error.
News of Obama’s decision on Afghanistan broke early this afternoon as he was attending the White House science fair.
Later in the afternoon, President Obama declined to take questions from reporters gathered in the Rose Garden after he made his statement on Afghanistan.
Reporters at the White House spotted several political columnists exiting the White House prior to Obama’s remarks.
According to the White House, Obama had a private lunch with foreign policy columnists Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, Jeffery Goldberg, Gerald Seib, Fareed Zakaria, Peter Bergen, Susan Glasser, and Peter Beinart.
RPT: Bodies of 28 Vets Finally Moved From L.A. Morgue to Cemetery
There are new allegations of veterans being neglected even after they’ve passed away.Read more below from CBS Los Angeles:
The morgue says the bodies were unclaimed and they don’t know how long the veterans were there.
The law states veterans are supposed to receive a proper burial.
The Veterans Administration says they were never notified the bodies were processed and ready to be buried.
More than two dozen bodies were transported to the Riverside National Cemetery Friday afternoon and more could be moved as they are identified.On Friday evening, KCAL9′s Stacey Butler reported the LA County Morgue and the Veteran’s Administration were blaming each other for the mistake.
Breitbart.com’s Kerry Picket was on “Hannity” tonight to discuss the alarming report.
“The interesting thing here is that we’re seeing a circular firing squad among these agencies passing blame,” she said, noting that the morgue blamed the VA while the VA blamed the morgue.
Picket said that officials only did something about the bodies when the press drew attention to the situation, blasting the scenario as “pretty pathetic.”
CNN Anchor: Michelle Obama Can Sign Bills Into Law
By Todd CefarattiRemember when we elected Michelle Obama so that she could tell us what to feed our children?
Yeah, me neither…
On
Tuesday, CNN rose to its typical level of journalistic excellence when
CNN’s Carol Costello played a 2010 clip of Michelle Obama speaking of
the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. After the clip, Costello reminded
viewer that the preceding clip was of when Michelle Obama signed into
law the act.
Of course, Michelle did not sign the act since… well, she wasn’t elected president.
The clip shows Michelle Obama saying,
“We can all agree that in the wealthiest nation on earth all children should have the basic nutrition they need to learn and grow and to pursue their dreams because in the end nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our children. Nothing. And our hopes for their future should drive every single decision that we make.”
Putting
aside, for a moment, that her husband has been instrumental in creating
disastrous policies that have saddled our children with a humongous
national debt that will leave them with a decidedly worse-off America,
Michelle’s campaign to make our children’s food taste terrible has
mirrored the success of Obamacare.
Costello narrated: (emphasis added)
“That was Mrs. Obama back in 2010 when she signed the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act into law. Well now some members of Congress and the food industry want to roll back that initiative and loosen requirements to cut costs. Today the First Lady takes the unusual step of delivering White House remarks speaking out against that House measure and in another twist, a one-time ally of Mrs. Obama’s initiative is now a critic.”
Michelle
Obama has been critical of a Republican-backed House measure that would
scale-back the food requirements to which schools must adhere and even
gave the White House remarks.
Michelle
Obama, undoubtedly, holds influence in the White House; most First
Ladies do. But let’s not forget one important fact: nobody elected her.
She’s not a president; she’s not a lawmaker. She’s an advocate for a
cause that, quite frankly, has failed and is rife with hypocrisy and
egomaniacal soundbites.
It’s
incredible that we live in a time when the President has dismissed the
Supreme Court’s importance as “an unelected group” of people, but has
offered his wife a chance to combat Congress on a measure in the House
from the bully pulpit of the White House.Obama’s Labor Secretary Tweets Advice to Grads: Don’t be an Individual, Join the Collective!
Yes, it’s the season for American college students to graduate
from the care-free days of college and head into crushing debt and unemployment,
thanks to Obama’s failed economic policies. But don’t worry, kids; Tom
Perez, Obama’s Secretary to the Labor Department, has some great advice
for you as you hang out in your parents’ basement:
Fox News commentator Jonathan Hoenig accurately deciphered Perez’s message:
It’s little surprise that Secretary Perez wants young Americans to devalue individualism. After all, individualism leads to hard work, hard work leads to personal responsibility, and personal responsibility leads to the dark side – voting Republican!
By Elizabeth Harrington
The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave nearly $5 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create scenarios based on America’s actions on climate change, including a utopian future where everyone rides a bike and courts forcibly take property from the wealthy.
The government has awarded $4,911,961 for the project, which is slated to run until March 2016 and for which the school has created a website suggesting different possibilities of what Yahara, a Wisconsin watershed, will be like in 2070.
In the scenario where Americans “shift our values,” people live in hippie-like communes after “youth culture” convinces the world to give up their cars and eat vegetarian.
“By the 2020s, the world seemed at the edge of environmental and political collapse,” the scenario says. “Despite this predicament, youth culture becomes empowered to shift the course of humanity. Disenchanted with the country’s highly consumptive culture, the younger generations embrace community building and sustainability and work together through grassroots action to get their voices heard.”
The youth bring about the “Great Transition” in the 2040s, establishing a “new normal” where “connectivity, community, and environmental sustainability pervade policy and cultural decisions.”
The protagonist of the story is Rosa, a “community organizer” for a United Nations youth group “Badgers for Our Future,” who presides over the only holiday celebrated in the community, Earth Day.
“It has become custom for Rosa, the unofficial community matriarch, to give a blessing before the Earth Day meal (although not everyone in the community is religious, they say secular blessings before important community meals to express gratitude for what the Earth provided them),” the story says.
The community shares economic resources, as well as goods and services, such as “vehicles, appliances, equipment, meals, and expertise.” Material wealth is criticized, and the community lives by the slogan “rich in time; sufficient in things.”
“Material wealth is not the coefficient of life quality,” the story says. “As such, consumers, overall, consume less.”
“What individuals don’t share with their communities is purchased primarily out of need.”
Rosa celebrates a court decision that forcibly took property from wealthy individuals as a required step to place the community above the individual.
“Even though most Yaharans had become more willing to undertake serious conservation measures, the willingness was not universal, especially when certain sacrifices were required,” she tells her granddaughter in the story. “To create the preserve, Grandpa had to convince several wealthy residents to give up either some of their property or their control of it.”
When some individuals refused, a coalition took them to court, which unanimously ruled in favor of building a community beach.
“It was a glorious victory!” Rosa says. “Oh, how we celebrated! It symbolized how far we’d come in putting the good of our communities and our environment before the desires of the individual. The triumph was proof the Great Transition had arrived.”
“I’d say my community embodies the ideals of the Great Transition,” Rosa says in an animated video. “Like many communities in Yahara, we’ve joined our backyards together into one communal space. We have a small urban farm, a restored prairie, and a community gathering space.”
Citizens of Yahara are “much less reliant on cars,” the only ones left on the roads being hybrids or electric, and the roads are full of bike lanes to “accommodate the growing masses of bike commuters.”
“Since more people are living the pedestrian life, with their feet more frequently on the pavement or the pedal, the obesity rate is shrinking,” the story says.
People are glad to pay higher taxes in this future because of an “increased sense of responsibility toward one’s community.” Campaign finance reform has also brought “increased transparency and public participation in decision making.”
The American diet is “now primarily plant-based” after “widespread public concern over the climate footprint of livestock banished meat as a dietary centerpiece.”
Policy changes such as a mandatory living wage for farm workers have “caused food prices to rise,” though the public is “largely unfazed,” the story says.
The UN youth movement helped usher in this “new world order,” where population growth has declined, use of fossil fuels has largely been deserted in favor or wind and solar, and a cross-country train system has replaced air fare that has become too expensive.
“In the United States, as family sizes decreased, the conceptual boundaries of ‘family’ expanded to include neighbors and friends,” the story says.
Americans now engage in the “pursuit of sustainable happiness,” by adopting a global Gross National Happiness (GNH) index as “its official gauge of prosperity,” replacing GDP.
The index is based on a system from the country of Bhutan, and takes into account “good governance” and “environmental conservation.”
However, pockets of “traditionalists” still threaten the “winds of great change.” The so-called traditionalists have “been slower to accept or adopt the newer norms, feel society has not necessarily gotten better with the Transition, since certain conveniences and privacies have disappeared.”
A small group of elderly people also “occasionally complain” that the community “constrains individual privacy, but with the widespread embrace of space sharing and walkability, such complaints are considered deviant.”
Rosa acknowledges that the community is “certainly no utopia.” “Although economic equality has improved as a result of these changes, poverty still exists, and many people still rely on entitlement programs,” the story adds.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison project is similar to the $5.6 million the NSF awarded to Columbia University to record “voicemails from the future” that paint a picture of an earth destroyed due to climate change.
Congrats to @oberlincollege grads today. Remember: Don't let individualism trump community; move from a selfie culture to an #ussie culture.
“@LaborSec: Don't let individualism trump community..." // Pure, un-American collectivism.
It’s little surprise that Secretary Perez wants young Americans to devalue individualism. After all, individualism leads to hard work, hard work leads to personal responsibility, and personal responsibility leads to the dark side – voting Republican!
Doctor reveals the VA Hospitals' real problem
By Thomas Lifson
America is having what President Obama called a “teachable moment” on single-payer health care, the goal toward which Obamacare is but the first step. Doctor Hal Scherz has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal
today in which he lays out the real problem with the VA single-payer
health care system, and offers hair raising examples, naming names. This
is a brave thing for a doctor to do. In his words:
The VA health-care system is run by a centrally controlled federal bureaucracy. Ultimately, that is the source of the poor care veterans receive.
Bureaucracies
that don’t face real competitive discipline of the marketplace
inevitably turn their efforts toward protecting their own members,
leaving the ostensible goals of the organization in a subordinate
position. Dr. Scherz provides examples of how this has worked out in the
VA system. He notes that most physicians in the United States have
experience with VA Hospitals because most of the 153 VA Hospitals are
affiliated with the country’s 155 medical schools, so physicians in
training work at them, gaining experience as interns and medical
residents. This makes the “well aware” of the problems of the VA system.
He writes:
In my experience at VA hospitals in San Antonio and San Diego, patients were seen in clinics that were understaffed and overscheduled. Appointments for X-rays and other tests had to be scheduled months in advance, and longer for surgery. Hospital administrators limited operating time, making sure that work stopped by 3 p.m. Consequently, the physician in charge kept a list of patients who needed surgery and rationed the available slots to those with the most urgent problems.Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon and a friend, trained at the Miami VA hospital. In an attempt to get more patients onto the operating-room schedule, he enlisted fellow residents to clean the operating rooms between cases and transport patients from their rooms into the surgical suites. Instead of offering praise for their industriousness, the chief of surgery reprimanded the doctors and put a stop to their actions. From his perspective, they were not solving a problem but were making federal workers look bad, and creating more work for others, like nurses, who had to take care of more post-op patients.At the VA hospital in St. Louis, urologist Michael Packer, a former partner of mine, had difficulty getting charts from the medical records department. He and another resident hunted them down themselves. It was easier for department workers to say that they couldn't find a chart than to go through the trouble of looking. Without these records, patients could not receive care, which was an unacceptable situation to these doctors. Not long after they began doing this, they were warned to stand down.There are thousands of other stories just like these.
It
is important that Americans understand the fundamental point about the
incompatibility of monopolistic medical bureaucracies and high quality
medical care. It is not a matter of incompetent management and employees
(though such no doubt exist). The problem will not be solved by adding
dedicated leaders and staff; they also no doubt exist in the VA health
care system.
People
who can’t be fired and who know that no matter what they do their
organization will continue to exist inevitably become self-serving. This
is the moral hazard of government funded bureaucracies.
The solution to the health care problems of veterans and all Americans lies in the competitive discipline of market forces. As Obamacare implodes, we must keep the example of the VA sstem in mind. And as we figure out how to get care to the veterans who have earned it, we must embrace market forces.
UN ‘youth movement’ brings about ‘new world order’ by 2070
The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave nearly $5 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create scenarios based on America’s actions on climate change, including a utopian future where everyone rides a bike and courts forcibly take property from the wealthy.
The government has awarded $4,911,961 for the project, which is slated to run until March 2016 and for which the school has created a website suggesting different possibilities of what Yahara, a Wisconsin watershed, will be like in 2070.
In the scenario where Americans “shift our values,” people live in hippie-like communes after “youth culture” convinces the world to give up their cars and eat vegetarian.
“By the 2020s, the world seemed at the edge of environmental and political collapse,” the scenario says. “Despite this predicament, youth culture becomes empowered to shift the course of humanity. Disenchanted with the country’s highly consumptive culture, the younger generations embrace community building and sustainability and work together through grassroots action to get their voices heard.”
The youth bring about the “Great Transition” in the 2040s, establishing a “new normal” where “connectivity, community, and environmental sustainability pervade policy and cultural decisions.”
The protagonist of the story is Rosa, a “community organizer” for a United Nations youth group “Badgers for Our Future,” who presides over the only holiday celebrated in the community, Earth Day.
“It has become custom for Rosa, the unofficial community matriarch, to give a blessing before the Earth Day meal (although not everyone in the community is religious, they say secular blessings before important community meals to express gratitude for what the Earth provided them),” the story says.
The community shares economic resources, as well as goods and services, such as “vehicles, appliances, equipment, meals, and expertise.” Material wealth is criticized, and the community lives by the slogan “rich in time; sufficient in things.”
“Material wealth is not the coefficient of life quality,” the story says. “As such, consumers, overall, consume less.”
“What individuals don’t share with their communities is purchased primarily out of need.”
Rosa celebrates a court decision that forcibly took property from wealthy individuals as a required step to place the community above the individual.
“Even though most Yaharans had become more willing to undertake serious conservation measures, the willingness was not universal, especially when certain sacrifices were required,” she tells her granddaughter in the story. “To create the preserve, Grandpa had to convince several wealthy residents to give up either some of their property or their control of it.”
When some individuals refused, a coalition took them to court, which unanimously ruled in favor of building a community beach.
“It was a glorious victory!” Rosa says. “Oh, how we celebrated! It symbolized how far we’d come in putting the good of our communities and our environment before the desires of the individual. The triumph was proof the Great Transition had arrived.”
“I’d say my community embodies the ideals of the Great Transition,” Rosa says in an animated video. “Like many communities in Yahara, we’ve joined our backyards together into one communal space. We have a small urban farm, a restored prairie, and a community gathering space.”
Citizens of Yahara are “much less reliant on cars,” the only ones left on the roads being hybrids or electric, and the roads are full of bike lanes to “accommodate the growing masses of bike commuters.”
“Since more people are living the pedestrian life, with their feet more frequently on the pavement or the pedal, the obesity rate is shrinking,” the story says.
People are glad to pay higher taxes in this future because of an “increased sense of responsibility toward one’s community.” Campaign finance reform has also brought “increased transparency and public participation in decision making.”
The American diet is “now primarily plant-based” after “widespread public concern over the climate footprint of livestock banished meat as a dietary centerpiece.”
Policy changes such as a mandatory living wage for farm workers have “caused food prices to rise,” though the public is “largely unfazed,” the story says.
The UN youth movement helped usher in this “new world order,” where population growth has declined, use of fossil fuels has largely been deserted in favor or wind and solar, and a cross-country train system has replaced air fare that has become too expensive.
“In the United States, as family sizes decreased, the conceptual boundaries of ‘family’ expanded to include neighbors and friends,” the story says.
Americans now engage in the “pursuit of sustainable happiness,” by adopting a global Gross National Happiness (GNH) index as “its official gauge of prosperity,” replacing GDP.
The index is based on a system from the country of Bhutan, and takes into account “good governance” and “environmental conservation.”
However, pockets of “traditionalists” still threaten the “winds of great change.” The so-called traditionalists have “been slower to accept or adopt the newer norms, feel society has not necessarily gotten better with the Transition, since certain conveniences and privacies have disappeared.”
A small group of elderly people also “occasionally complain” that the community “constrains individual privacy, but with the widespread embrace of space sharing and walkability, such complaints are considered deviant.”
Rosa acknowledges that the community is “certainly no utopia.” “Although economic equality has improved as a result of these changes, poverty still exists, and many people still rely on entitlement programs,” the story adds.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison project is similar to the $5.6 million the NSF awarded to Columbia University to record “voicemails from the future” that paint a picture of an earth destroyed due to climate change.
Obama Meets Congressional Resistance, Selectively Sulks
By James Longstreet
...The president seems frustrated that he isn’t getting “his” way. In an article in the Washington Times,
“President Obama is taking a swipe at the Founding Fathers, blaming his
inability to move his agenda on the 'disadvantage' of having each state
represented equally in the Senate.”
Progressives would like nothing more than a giant merger of all (57) states and national popular voting.
Disappointed
and finger-pointing once again, Mr. Obama blames our form of government
for not allowing his plans to be implemented. Curiously, Mr. Obama
does not point to Harry Reid and his antics in the Senate.
Yes,
blocking the flow of ideas and legislation is Mr. Reid’s forte. Like
Johnny Quick of the LA Kings, Reid prevents bills duly and legally
passed by the House of Representatives,
the People’s house, from even getting voting consideration in the
Senate. Now there is an impediment, Mr. Obama. Have you noticed?
Perhaps
the rules preventing legislation passed by one chamber of Congress to
be dismissed by the “other” chamber is what is required. No person such
as Harry Reid, from an under-populated non-essential state like Nevada,
should essentially roadblock the work of the House of Representatives
to protect the president’s agenda and hide the voting records of the
sitting Senators. But I don’t think this is what the president is
speaking to, exactly.
An article in The Hill mentions,
“Out of the 195 House-passed bills that are now stalled in the Senate,
31 were written by Democrats, and many have been awaiting Senate
approval for close to a year. “
Eric Cantor has established a website dedicated to bills stuck in the Senate.
The
Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution after years of studying
centuries of world government. In so doing, they prepared for those who
may attempt to force into effect
agenda whims fashioned to temporal ideology, to meet with significant
systemic resistance. Any expert in the Constitution would have known.
Why is the “expert” surprisingly frustrated?
The
Founders and Framers seemed to envision a president with such designs.
Unfortunately, what they didn’t envision or prepare for was a barely
elected two-bit senator from a one-bit state blocking legislation passed
in the House from any due consideration in the Senate. Mr. Madison,
meet Harry Reid, the man who is singlehandedly, in a democratic
representative society, undoing the system. One might ask by whose
direction.
Barack Obama and His Urban Parasites Declare War on the Constitution
By William A Levinson
...His recent statement about the role of the U.S. Senate proves that he is a self-declared enemy of the United States Constitution and of its checks and balances on federal power.
At a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago Thursday night, Mr. Obama told a small group of wealthy supporters that there are several hurdles to keeping Democrats in control of the Senate and recapturing the House. One of those problems, he said, is the apportionment of two Senate seats to each state regardless of population.“Obviously, the nature of the Senate means that California has the same number of Senate seats as Wyoming. That puts us at a disadvantage,” Mr. Obama said.
Of course, Wyoming has the same Senate representation as California specifically
to prevent individuals like Barack Obama, and his constituency of urban
parasites, from imposing their will on the less populous states. This "Great Compromise" of 1787 was a condition of these states' willingness to join the United States in the first place.
This
is also why each state gets no fewer than three electoral votes,
regardless of population. Hillary Clinton dislikes this arrangement,
because it gives her constituency less leverage in presidential
elections.
Urban Parasites: the Core of the Democratic Party
Barack Obama added explicitly that his kind of Democrats congregate primarily in big cities.
These cities are the sources of most of the country's problems,
including attacks on the Second Amendment, attacks on the First
Amendment via speech codes and zero tolerance policies in public
schools, cap and trade mandates to enrich
Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase, and pressure for ever-increasing
taxation of the nation's productive elements. They are also centers for
violent crime, drug distribution, and gang activity. Most of
Wilkes-Barre's drug and gang trouble, for example, originates in Philadelphia, New York, and Newark.
The modern big city is, regardless of the work ethic of its productive residents,
an economic parasite. Cities evolved for exactly two purposes, neither
of which they serve today. These were defensibility and commerce. A
city's walls could once stop swordsmen and spearmen almost indefinitely.
...Cities
also once served as centers of commerce. If you wanted to buy or sell
something you could not buy or sell in your village, you had to go to
the city – and "a trip to the big city" was once a major and exciting
event in people's lives.
.....The
sons and daughters of coal miners and factory workers know that you
have to work for a living, while Obama's urban parasites think they can
simply vote themselves health care benefits, welfare payments, and
anything else they think they need. Robert A. Heinlein warned of these
others:
But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader – the barbarians enter Rome.
One
of the roles of the Senate's "one state, two votes" arrangement is to
stop the parasites from voting themselves bread and circuses. Barack
Obama's own statements about the nature of the U.S. Senate, along with
his confirmation that his kind of Democrat congregates in the nation's
big cities, tell us everything we need to know about the upcoming House
and Senate elections.
The Left Doesn’t Really Believe in Climate Change
By Jon Gabriel
....Every time a real-world solution is provided to a promised calamity,
leftist leaders move the goalposts. To be sure, many well-meaning
parishioners have bought the con and piously observe the demanding
rituals of earth worship. But the high priests still jet around the
globe, chasing checks from energy tycoons to build monstrous mansions
along doomed coastlines.That’s because the Left doesn’t really believe in climate change. Their true religion is raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Climate change is just a temporary excuse to achieve those ends.
At West Point, Obama turns away from use of US military 'hammer'
By Justin Sink
President Obama on Wednesday argued for a new breed of American
foreign policy that prizes diplomacy and multilateralism over the
overreaching use of military force.But the president argued that amid a changing international landscape and in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "U.S. military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership."
"Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail," Obama told graduating cadets.
Obama argued that the threshold for military action must be higher when issues arise that "do not pose a direct threat to the United States.”
"In such circumstances, we should not go it alone. Instead, we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action. We must broaden our tools to include diplomacy and development; sanctions and isolation; appeals to international law and – if just, necessary, and effective – multilateral military action," Obama said.
The president said that by allying with other countries, U.S interests were more likely to succeed and less likely "to lead to costly mistakes."
The comment appeared a direct rebuke to critics who have charged that the president's foreign policy is faltering because he is unwilling to intervene. The president and aides have looked to push back against that narrative, using moments like his announcement Tuesday that troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2016 to note that it is harder to end a war than begin one.
....Obama said the one enduring direct threat to the U.S. came from global terrorism, but that, again, engaging partners around the world remained the best strategy.
"A strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naïve and unsustainable," Obama said. "I believe we must shift our counter-terrorism strategy – drawing on the successes and shortcomings of our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan – to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold."
Obama announced a pair of new foreign policy initiatives intended to embody his new approach: increased aid to the moderate opposition in Syria and a $5 billion anti-terrorism fund designed to help other countries fight the rise of radical extremists within their borders.
The fund, which will require congressional approval, is designed to boost intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance and special operations activities in allied countries. The U.S. military will help train and prepare other governments to root out terrorists within their borders.
In Syria, U.S. special forces will reportedly train and increase material support to moderate rebels that can be vetted as without links to radical Islamist groups. The U.S. will also step up assistance to Syria's neighbors, who have borne the brunt of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the bloody three-year civil war that has left more than 150,000 people dead.
...."I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it’s our willingness to affirm them through our actions," Obama said.
....The president's speech is intended to serve as a kick-off to a broad foreign policy push by the president and his Cabinet, according to the White House.
After West Point, Obama will travel to Europe next week to meet with leaders on Ukraine. He’ll also attend ceremonies commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, where Putin will also be present. In the coming days, Cabinet members will also fan out across Capitol Hill to bolster the White House’s arguments.
By Victor Davis Hanson
If we were living in normal times, the following scandals and failures — without going into foreign policy — would have ruined a presidency to the point of reducing it to Nixon, Bush, or Truman poll ratings.
Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.
So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?
...I leave you with one final paradox. Is one reason that Obama resonates so well with the very wealthy his assurance to them that the muscular successful classes will not be following them into the elite?
Whom does the liberal elite detest? Not the very poor. Not the middle class. Not the conservative wealthy of like class. Mostly it is the Sarah-Palin-type grasping want-to-be’s (thus the vicious David Letterman jokes or Katie Couric animus or Bill Maher venom).
Those of the entrepreneurial class who own small businesses (‘you didn’t build that’), who send their kids to San Diego State rather than Stanford, who waste their ill-gotten gains on jet skis rather than skis and on Winnebagos rather than mountain climbing equipment, who employ 10 rather than 10,000, and who vacation at Pismo Beach rather than Carmel. The cool of Obama says to the very wealthy, “I’m one of you. See you again next summer on the Vineyard.”
Obama signals to the elite that he too is bothered by those non-arugula-eating greedy losers who are xenophobic and angry that the world left them behind, who are without tastes and culture, who are materialistic to the core, and who are greedy in their emphases on the individual — the tea-baggers, the clingers, the Cliven Bundy Neanderthals, the Palins in their Alaska haunts, and the Duck Dynasty freaks. These are not the sort of successful people that we want to the world to associate with America, not when we have suitably green, suitably diverse zillionaires who know where to eat in Paris.
Finally, Obama has “cool.” Or what his wife calls “swag.” The very wealthy are with him also because he instructs them how to indulge, to ignore the problems of others, to be narcissistic and self-absorbed with a veneer of hipster cool. Golf, shoot hoops, wear shades, hang with Jay-Z and Beyonce, talk about your rap menu on your iPhone, fluctuate your cadences, do you Final Four predictions — all that means you can be cool and very rich and very self-absorbed while fooling hoi polloi and feeling great about your privilege at the same time. If you are a jean- and T-shirt wearing Silicon magnifico, Obama is your guy. The palatial estate, the imported cars, the indulgent hobbies — they are not really one-percenter excesses (try water skiing for that), but the swag that assures others that outsourcing, offshoring, tax-avoiding, lobbying, and insider cronyism are just part of the hip deal.
Before we reach November of 2016, we will see unimaginable things under this administration, but one of them will not be a defection of his constituencies.
Pretending the Islamic fury does not exist
Denial will only worsen the day of reckoning
By John R Bolten
....The key point, generally missed by America’s news media, is that
these three incidents have a common foundation. For years, there has
been a rising tide of Islamic radicalism, starting in the Middle East,
providing a hospitable environment in which terrorism grew naturally.
This radical wave has been spreading throughout northern Africa, into
Asia, and now around the world.....The United States and those who share our faith in freedom of conscience have several possible options. We can pretend the threat posed by the radical and terrorist Islamic fury doesn’t exist, hoping not to experience another Sept. 11, 2001. We can express selective indignation at abuses that offend our sensibilities, treating them as discrete offenses to which we react in an ad hoc fashion. Or we can recognize that a distinctive political ideology is at work here, one based on distorted religious precepts rather than a secular authoritarian philosophy like Nazism or communism.
Mr. Obama has largely pursued Option One, mixed, as in Nigeria’s tragedy, with inadequate, ad hoc responses. The fundamental reason for his unwillingness to address the threat directly and candidly, reflected in his 2009 Cairo speech and repeated frequently thereafter, is that so doing would offend the entire “Islamic world,” thereby increasing the terrorist threat.
The president, however, is badly mistaken, both analytically and operationally, as the pending controversies highlight. First, it is patronizing and condescending to refer to a “Muslim world” as if all Muslims robotically think exactly the same, or to imply that Muslims themselves are not acutely aware of the dangers of radicalism and terrorism, which they know first-hand. The idea that individual Muslims cannot distinguish between the legitimate practice of their faith and those distorting it for ideological purposes is breathtakingly wrong. There is no more a monolithic “Muslim world” than there is a “Christian world.”
Second, if we shrink from identifying and naming a palpable threat to our values and very existence, we can hardly protect ourselves effectively. It is manifestly not an assault on Islam to pinpoint the current ideological threat, and trace it to its source. The United States must shape its policies in light of reality, or we remain extraordinarily vulnerable to a manifest assault against both our physical safety and the cornerstones of an open and free society.
Third, the threat is imminent and rising. In just the past two years, North Africa has seen the deadly attack on Algeria’s Tigantourine natural-gas facility, the near collapse of Mali’s government, the destructive force of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and the deadly Sept. 11 attack on our Benghazi consulate. All the while, Hamas and Hezbollah are continuing their deadly terrorist pursuits, Syria has collapsed into a brutal civil war, Iraq is on the brink, and Iran’s ayatollahs are rapidly nearing a deliverable nuclear-weapons capability.
These catastrophes are related, sometimes directly involving close cooperation among terrorist and extremist forces. Our unwillingness to grasp the connections and discuss them rationally will not make them disappear, and certainly will not make them easier to defend against. Seeing the world clearly is not evidence of religious animus. Instead, refusing to acknowledge the obvious is a form of blindness that can be fatal, as we have all too seen often in recent years.
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