PK'S NOTE: We live in historic times. Our country is lost as a republic and it's happening faster every day. A handful of years ago, if enough people had woken up, we might have saved it but I fear it is now too late. What can we do? Read this by Glenn Beck:
Is this the most controversial thing Glenn has ever said?
...So what is the answer? Here comes the controversial answer, and I don’t think it’s really, shouldn’t be all that controversial. Have to have faith, and you add to faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge moderation, moderation patience, patience reverence, reverence kindness into charity. This comes from 2 Peter, and this is the path.We have to start just increasing our faith, have enough faith to be able to say okay, I know God’s got it under control, and I’m just going to be a virtuous person. I’m just going to live by the principles that I know I’m supposed to live, and I’m going to add to that knowledge. I’m going to do as much homework. You’ve already done, hopefully you’ve done this and this.
Now, moderation, I’m going to downsize my life. I’m not going to be extreme in any way. And then patience, I’m going to be patient with the people who drive me out of my mind. I’m going to have reverence for something. Let me ask you, how many things do we have reverence for? Do we have reverence for anything anymore?
Reverence, kindness, and charity, now, that’s the recipe, but here’s my job, I think. I don’t even think we have faith anymore. I don’t think we have faith for anything, which is why I started Mercury One. Mercury One is what? What do they do? Charity, but they do charity, that’s at the bottom of the list. No, charity causes you to do one thing, and you’ve felt it if you’ve ever been to any of our events, anything, the Restoring Honor, Restoring Love, any of these things.
When you were involved, you remember what it feels like to be around people who are good, what it feels like to be a part of community. And that remembrance does one thing, it gives you hope, hope that something is going to happen, something good is around the corner, there are good people. You remember that, and you’ve seen it in action. So you remember, and you think there is hope, okay, we’re going to have hope.
Hope leads to faith. And from faith, then you start this cycle, and you go down. And it repeats itself. This is why I’ve been saying people are going to start feeling invisible. We have got to get together with the people, the left and the right, that are not centered on politics but on principles because they feel the same way that we do. They’re lacking faith or hope in anything, in anything. That’s why goodness, decency, kindness, charity is the answer.
Anger, politics, protests, guns, all of that will only make that top come down and swallow up the bottom, and it’s 70 years of darkness. We have one chance to do it and do it right, and I really truly believe, I’ve said this from the beginning, you are the audience that will make the difference. You are the group of people that will actually end up in the end saving the country from profound darkness, but we have to follow a pattern.
That’s a pretty good pattern. What do you say we work on charity, and we find groups of people that will work and serve people who think that we’re haters? Let’s find those people and serve them, not asking anything in return, just love them. It will grow hope and faith, and then you’re off to the races.
Issa subpoenas IRS for Lerner's hard drive
By Thomas LifsonHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee ChairmanDarrell Issa on Tuesday issued a subpoena to the Internal Revenue Service, ordering the agency to turn over the hard drive they claim is responsible for wiping out two years of critical email communications.Anyone claiming that Issa is on a fishing expedition risks the mockery that has greeted the IRS’s claim that the dog ate its homework. There are legions of data recovery experts out there just itching to demonstrate their skills in recovering the emails in question.
Unless, of course, there is a spike driven through the disk itself. That would make the data unrecoverable, but might raise some interesting questions.Just to make sure, Issa is asking for some other materials:
+ All back-up tapes, external drives, thumb drives, or other storage media the IRS used to capture, archive, back up, or otherwise record e-mails sent or received by Lerner from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept. 23, 2013.The Real Story of the IRS Scandal
+ All hard drives, external drives, thumb drives, and computers Lerner used from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept.23, 2013.
+ All electronic communication devices the IRS issued to Lerner from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept. 23, 2013.
+ All electronic files, including, but not limited to, .pst files, relating to the IRS e-mail account Lerner used from Jan. 1, 2009, to Sept. 23, 2013.
+ All documents and communications that Lerner printed and/or stored for Federal Records Act compliance purposes from Jan. 1, 2009 to Sept. 23, 2013.
+ All documents and communications referring or relating to the production to any congressional committee or member of Congress of e-mail communications sent or received by Lerner from Jan. 1, 2009, to Aug. 2, 2013.
+ All documents and communications referring or relating to the creation of “Enclosure 3” from the June 13 letter from Leonard Oursler to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch, titled “Description of IRS Email Collection and Production."
+ All documents and communications between or among IRS employees and employees of any Executive Branch entity referring or relating to the IRS’ production of documents to Congress from May 10, 2013, to the present.
+ All documents and communications referring or relating to the subpoena issued by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Aug. 2, 2013.
+ All documents and communications referring or relating to the subpoena issued by House Oversight to Koskinen on Feb. 14.
By Jonah Goldberg
‘Congressional investigators
are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a
trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea-party
controversy.”
That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story
on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of e-mails over two
years relating to the agency’s alleged targeting of political groups
hostile to the president.
But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators — Republican lawmakers — are outraged.
...This is one of the great public-relations turnaround
stories of all time. Liberal groups successfully spun the incident as a
well-intentioned mistake by a government agency trying to deal with a
deluge of new applications from right-wing crazies let loose by the
Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The “real” story was — again — Republican overreach.
Never mind that there was no evidence for such an
“uptick” in applications — Lerner’s word. Indeed, evidence suggests that
Lerner went looking for that evidence as an excuse for abuses she had
already undertaken.
Known gang members among thousands of illegal immigrant children storming the U.S. border and officials are now trying to silence officers from talking to the media
By Ashley Collman & Ryan Parry
....Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Arizona told the National Review that officers who recognize gang tattoos on the minors are supposed to treat them like everyone else.
For
the most part, that means letting these unaccompanied children be
reunited with their parents or other relatives already living in the
United States.
...The
latest revelation about potentially violent minors entering the
country, comes as Border Patrol agents are being told not to talk to
reporters who have traveled south to cover the hordes of children
crossing into the U.S.
Assistant
chief patrol Agent Eligio 'Lee' Pena sent a email to 3,000 officers
telling them not to talk to journalists and that some reporters 'may try
to disguise themselves'.
The
email, obtained by The Associated Press, said agents should not speak
to reporters, on or off duty, without advanced permission and warned
that anyone who does could be charged with a crime or disciplined
administratively.
A border guard said the resources are so slim that diseased children are separated simply by yellow police evidence tape
More than
47,000 children have been apprehended at the U.S. Mexico border since
the beginning of this year, and patrol officers believe the Central
American media may be to blame -encouraging young people to make the
trip north.
'I've
heard people come in and say, "You're going to let me go, just like you
let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You're going to let
me go as well, and the government's going to take care of us,' Cabrera
says. 'Until we start mandatory detentions, mandatory removals, I don't
think anything is going to change. As a matter of fact, I think it's
going to get worse.
Mexican Embassy: Mexicans 'Illegally' Crossing U.S. Border 'Are Not Committing a Crime'
By Dan JosephMRCTV talks to protesters calling for the release of U.S. Marine Andrew Tahmooressi outside the Mexican Embassy - where a spokesperson for the Mexican Embassy tells them illegal border crossing is "not committing a crime."
"When a Mexican, or any other citizen, crosses a border, let's say illegally, they are not committing a crime. They are doing it illegally, but they are not committing a crime. No, they are not. Check your law," Public Affairs Minister Ariel Moutsatos-Morales says.
ISIS and an Open Border: A Perfect Storm
By Brian C Joondeph....Now back to our porous southern border. If gang members can easily cross into the U.S., would it be any more difficult for members of the Death-to-America crowd to also traipse across? The LA Times reports more than 35,000 illegal immigrants arriving in the U.S. each month. If only one out of a hundred of these new arrivals are members if ISIS, Al Qaeda, or another similarly predisposed group, that’s 350 very bad guys each month ready to set up shop here and bring Death-to-America to city near you.
Not to mention recruiting disaffected U.S. residents to join their cause. A former Gitmo detainee was recently arrested in Spain, caught recruiting for ISIS. How hard would it be to hold a similar membership drive in Mexico or Central America, with the new jihadists joining the flood of 35,000immigrants per month across our border?
This is hardly a new idea. In 2006, a congressional report described 1.2 million illegal aliens apprehended in 2005, 165,000 from countries other than Mexico, and 650 from “special interest countries.” By 2010, the problem was no better. Senator John Cornyn noted 663 individuals arrested crossing the southern border that year from countries known to have ties with terrorism. These include Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and Syria.
How many were not arrested? That’s unanswerable. But with 35,000 crossing each month, you can bet it’s a significant number. Once safely in the U.S., how hard is it then to bring jihad to America? A shooter in a crowded mall. A homemade bomb at a subway station. Sabotage of power station or reservoir.
Which is why our wide-open borders are an invitation for big trouble. Illegal immigrants receiving free health care and education is the least of it. The bigger question is who is crossing into the U.S. and what are their intentions? As the administration allows the radical Islamic caliphate to grow in the Middle East, and opens our borders wide for any and all to travel into the U.S., this double whammy may give us some unpleasant surprises in the next few years.
PK'S NOTE: A corrupt government will always find a way to get what it wants. This is a priority for them, of course, ignoring foreign and domestic fires burning. And they will congratulate themselves for being clever while the country burns and they fiddle.
Patent office strips Redskins' trademark
By Mario Trujillo
The
Washington Redskins' trademark is disparaging and must be cancelled,
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office wrote in a ruling Wednesday. [READ THE RULING.]
"Based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered," the ruling reads.
“We lack statutory authority to issue rulings concerning the right to use trademarks," the ruling continued.
The board said six of the Redskins’ trademarks are subject to cancellation proceedings, including a number of logos used in radio, television and print.
The office made a similar ruling in 1992, but the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia reversed the board's decision after a lengthy litigation process in 2003.
The issue has gained increased attention in the last year as nearly every Democratic leader has pressed the team to change the name, including 50 Democratic senators who wrote to the NFL last month encouraging it to force the team's name change.
Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will likely face questions Wednesday about a massive mortgage holder database his agency helps run and how closely the agency is working with the Justice Department.
Cordray is testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, where he could again face unanswered questions about the national mortgage database – which contains information that can be shared with law enforcement — and whether the bureau is working with the Justice Department’s Operation Choke Point.
As TheBlaze previously reported, Operation Choke Point is a program that targets the banks handling the accounts of payday lenders, gun stores along with porn shops among other businesses deemed as high risk by the Justice Department.
Congressional Republicans have raised privacy and security questions about the database, which is maintained by the CFPB and by the Federal Housing Finance Authority. The database information can also be used for law enforcement purposes, according to Investors Business Daily.
...“Our principal concern is that the [federal registry] notice proposes to vastly expand the scope of FHFA’s data collection … to include a mortgage borrower’s Social Security number, financial account numbers, address, zip code, telephone number, race, religion, marital status, language spoken, education, military record, employment, presence of children by various age categories, deceased indicator, financial, and life events in the last few years, bankruptcy information, other assets/wealth, and performance data on all credit lines (i.e., credit cards, student loans, auto loans, and other loans reported to credit bureaus) of the mortgage borrower and all those associated with mortgage,” the letter said.
“Moreover, the FHFA and CFPB have already publicly indicated that borrowers do not have the opportunity or the right to opt out of the database,” the letter continued.
"Based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered," the ruling reads.
“We lack statutory authority to issue rulings concerning the right to use trademarks," the ruling continued.
The board said six of the Redskins’ trademarks are subject to cancellation proceedings, including a number of logos used in radio, television and print.
The office made a similar ruling in 1992, but the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia reversed the board's decision after a lengthy litigation process in 2003.
The issue has gained increased attention in the last year as nearly every Democratic leader has pressed the team to change the name, including 50 Democratic senators who wrote to the NFL last month encouraging it to force the team's name change.
Obama Admin. Is Getting Grilled About a Massive Mortgage Database That Could Be Used for Criminal Investigations
By Fred LucasRichard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will likely face questions Wednesday about a massive mortgage holder database his agency helps run and how closely the agency is working with the Justice Department.
Cordray is testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, where he could again face unanswered questions about the national mortgage database – which contains information that can be shared with law enforcement — and whether the bureau is working with the Justice Department’s Operation Choke Point.
As TheBlaze previously reported, Operation Choke Point is a program that targets the banks handling the accounts of payday lenders, gun stores along with porn shops among other businesses deemed as high risk by the Justice Department.
Congressional Republicans have raised privacy and security questions about the database, which is maintained by the CFPB and by the Federal Housing Finance Authority. The database information can also be used for law enforcement purposes, according to Investors Business Daily.
...“Our principal concern is that the [federal registry] notice proposes to vastly expand the scope of FHFA’s data collection … to include a mortgage borrower’s Social Security number, financial account numbers, address, zip code, telephone number, race, religion, marital status, language spoken, education, military record, employment, presence of children by various age categories, deceased indicator, financial, and life events in the last few years, bankruptcy information, other assets/wealth, and performance data on all credit lines (i.e., credit cards, student loans, auto loans, and other loans reported to credit bureaus) of the mortgage borrower and all those associated with mortgage,” the letter said.
“Moreover, the FHFA and CFPB have already publicly indicated that borrowers do not have the opportunity or the right to opt out of the database,” the letter continued.
Student veteran banned from reciting Pledge of Allegiance because it might offend international students
By Samantha ReinisArmy Staff Sergeant Cory Schroeder was told by University of Wyoming’s (UW) student government that he would not be allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance before its meetings because it could offend international students.
Schroeder was newly elected in May as a senator in the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming (ASUW) government to serve for the upcoming school year. He has been in the Army for over six years and completed a tour of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Multiple senators sat me down and said. . .‘we don’t want to offend anybody.’"
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Schroeder became upset when he realized the meetings did not open with the option of saying the Pledge....Lind-Gonzales allegedly told Schroeder that the Pledge was a sensitive issue that could possibly offend the two international students in ASUW as well as several others who attend the meetings. The U.S. veteran was given the option of writing a bill to allocate 20 seconds at the beginning of the meetings for those who want to say the Pledge.
UPDATE: In an email to Campus Reform, ASUW Vice President Ricardo Lind-Gonzales has clarified ‘[t]he Pledge was not left off the agenda due to being seen as offensive.”
Lind-Gonzales wrote that “[t]he Senator was in no way banned from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings. The Pledge of Allegiance is a tradition that many organizations adopt in their meeting procedures. To our knowledge this has not been a component of our agenda as outlined in Article II (Order of Business) of the ASUW rules and procedures.”
Absurd: Planned Parenthood Hosts "Condom Crafting"
By Claire E HealeyThe Planned Parenthood Vandalia abortion feeder clinic in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN recently had "cause for celebration." That's because a new commuter rail line stop just opened near the clinic, giving clients more convenient access to it. The organization's "can't miss event" hosted activities that were "friendly for kids and fun for grown-ups" to celebrate the new line.
"Don't forget to stop by Planned Parenthood at 671 Vandalia Street. Volunteers will be passing out condom roses, a craft specialty of ours," Planned Parenthood wrote. (Never mind that two of the organization's condoms received the worst ratings according to Consumer Reports.)
This is the message we're sending to our children? That Planned Parenthood is a family-friendly organization? It is everything but. The organization's principles are inherently against family life. It's responsible for one in every four abortions in America - killing unborn children does the opposite of keeping a family intact. Former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson was once told to double the amount of abortions performed in order to bring the organization more revenue.
Planned Parenthood is also unashamedly teaching teens about BDSM, as Christine reported a few days ago. And let's not forget Live Action's recent comprehensive report, which documents six years of investigations that finds the organization guilty of aiding sex-selective abortions, covering up instances of sex-trafficking and statutory rape, and assisting underage teens in obtaining contraception. On some of its affiliates' resource pages, it lists the site "Go Ask Alice," which gives advice for "sexual" activities like drinking urine and playing with feces. On top of that, Planned Parenthood once released in ad campaign in New England with statements like "We're your private area: Discreet sexual health services in a new downtown location."
"Friendly for kids?" I don't think so.
Oh, and don't forget. Planned Parenthood still receives over $500 million in funding from taxpayers like you.
The Quote that Should End Hillary Clinton’s Political Career
By Bryan Preston
Presumed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a staged townhall meeting on CNN today. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour made sure that CNN lived up to the “Clinton News Network” nickname that the network earned during Bill Clinton’s two terms in the presidency, tossing softball questions to Mrs. Clinton and cheerleading for yet another Clinton presidency.
The subject turned to the Second Amendment, gun rights and the National Rifle Association. Clinton offered a quote in which she directly assaulted the First and Second Amendments simultaneously.
HRC on 2A rights: "We cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people"
Wait, what? Americans have the right, given to us not by government but by our Creator, to hold points of view whether the majority agrees with us or not. That right is protected from government by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Hillary’s statement brings up a terrifying question: What steps would President Hillary Clinton take to prevent Americans from holding a “viewpoint?”
Hillary claims 'fog of war' on Benghazi
By Thomas Lifson
...Hillary Clinton is attempting to rescue her standing by
distancing herself from her own performance as secretary of state. On
Benghazi, she backed away from the hard line she took in her book on the
deaths of 4 Americans due to admittedly inadequate security.
Ann Gearan and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post write:
Lucianne Goldberg nailed it when she quipped on her site:
Ann Gearan and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post write:
Later in the day, on her much-anticipated (and rather disappointing) Fox News interview, she used the words “fog of war” to excuse her blaming of the attack on an obscure video. Rebecca Shabad in The Hill:
....“There are answers, not all of them, not enough, frankly,” she said of the September 2012 attacks on a diplomatic and CIA compound that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others.
“I’m still looking for answers, because it was a confusing and difficult time,” Clinton said.
In a live interview on Fox News’s “Special Report” and “On the Record,” Clinton said she stood by testimony she gave Congress in January, 2013, when she said she knew of no other intelligence except the video narrative. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice presented that theory on Sunday talk shows after the attacks.Ahem, nobody in Benghazi saw the video. It was a planned attack. This is just a dodge, and not a very artful one at that.
“This was the fog of war,” Clinton said. “You know, my own assessment careened from, you know, the video had something to do with it; the video had nothing to do with it.”
Clinton pointed out that the anti-Islam video inspired an attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, that same day.
“It may have affected some people; it didn't affect other people. And I think the conclusion to draw -- because we were not just monitoring what was happening at Benghazi, once it began to unfold, but remember we had a very dangerous assault on our embassy in Cairo that same day, which was clearly linked to that video.”
Lucianne Goldberg nailed it when she quipped on her site:
Hillary goes "blonde" on Benghazi and changes her look to eye batting.It’s the “I didn’t know what I was doing at the time” defense. Not exactly inspiring of confidence, especially in the wake of the disastrous Obama presidency.
Obama, Sebelius Blame ‘Right-Wing Media,’ ‘Billionaires’ For Obamacare Failures
By Sarah HurtubiseFormer Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took aim at her “hostile” right-wing opponents Tuesday, in her first speech after resigning her top post.
At the State of Enrollment conference run by Enroll America, an Obamacare-promoting nonprofit run by former Obama White House staffer Anne Filipic, Sebelius addressed a friendly audience with a host of typical pro-Obamacare speakers, from insurance executive Dan Hilferty, Independence Blue Cross CEO, to Democratic Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.
“We had right-wing media, leadership in Congress who was determined on the House side to stop this law at any cost, shadow political organizations, hostile governors, hostile legislators, all working to make sure you couldn’t do the job that was so important,” Sebelius gushed, only once mentioning “our well-known issues with the website” putting a damper on customers getting coverage.
Sebelius even hit states for putting limits on navigators at all, seemingly, despite reports that personal information has already been put at risk. She hit back at the “relentless obstruction” of those who would put a check on Obamacare staffers asking for customers personal information — “people who were forced with getting fingerprints and paying a fee in order to help people access health insurance.”
She wasn’t alone. President Obama pre-taped a message for the conference, taking the opportunity to snipe at those who continue to oppose the health-care law in a short video.
By Rick Moran
The ISIS terrorists have captured the largest refinery in Iraq, located in the town of Baiji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad. The terrorists overran a battallion of Iraq soldiers supported by helicopter gunships.
The capture of this key facility gives the terrorists a potentially rich source of income. And it deals another blow to Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi army.
Obama's Last Card
By J R DunnWith the ongoing collapse of Iraq, the endgame for the worst foreign policy in American history has begun.
It is no less than astonishing to glance over the foreign policy errors made by the Obama administration since 2009.
● The deliberate alienation of the UK. Thanks to direct and malicious efforts made by President Obama personally (the Churchill bust, Region 1 DVDs), the oldest and most fruitful alliance of the modern age entered into its frostiest period since the Civil War... in the midst of a civilizational conflict in which the Anglosphere comprised the sole serious opposition.
● The deliberate undermining of Israel. Again, a loyal and steady ally was cut off for no rational reason. In this case, a country to which the U.S., as the chief representative of the West, owes an unquestionable moral debt. I guess O was listening to all those Jeremiah Wright sermons after all.
● The dismissal of India. Though generally overlooked, this marks a crucial blow against a future alliance promising profound benefits. The Bush administration put particular effort into widening relations with Asia’s largest democracy. Obama allowed this to collapse, evidently as an insult directed at George W. Bush.
● The abandonment of Africa. Again, Bush did yeoman’s work in reviving American involvement in Africa, an effort that generated praise even from his political enemies. As with India, our first African-heritage president dropped this without even a second glance.
● A back of the hand to Central Europe. Both Poland (the ABM system) and the Czech Republic (Early warning and control for the same system) had the rug pulled out from under them by Obama. Not a smart way to treat our most steady allies on the continent.
● The Russian “reset,” A goofy, ill-informed, and badly-executed reversal of post Cold War policy evidently designed to assure the Russians that we feel bad about 1989 and won’t do it again. Repaid with invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
● The North African apocalypse. Someday, somebody is going to drill down to the bottom of this episode and reveal exactly what was going on; contemporary media is too busy attacking the tea parties. It appears that this was the result of a scheme to “liberate” the Mediterranean littoral states, a mixture of U.S. allies and neutralized dictatorships, and transform them into mass democracies under the rubric of the “Arab Spring.” The “democrats” all seemed to be associates of the Moslem Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, the liberation a cataclysm that threatened to spread across the Islamic world. Obama, as is his custom, dropped all involvement and walked away. Thank Allah for the Egyptians.
● The demolition of Syria. A direct result of the “Arab Spring” strategy, the Syrian collapse piled one humiliation after another on the administration in the form of Benghazi and arms for al Qaeda. Almost unnoticed, the people of Syria are suffering a humanitarian catastrophe fully the equivalent of Rwanda and the Balkans in the 90s. Obama is handling it with same dynamism that Clinton did back then.
● The failure to back the “Green Revolution” in Iran. This is something of a mystery -- why undercut an uprising that promised to remove a active threat in the form of theocratic Iran and then two years later embark on something as foolish as the Arab Spring? Perhaps Valerie Jarrett’s future memoirs will enlighten us.
● Refusal to address the Iranian nuclear threat. See above.
● The collapse of Iraq. This is undoubtedly another case where Obama was intent on throwing away a Bush success. Fumbling the Status of Forces agreement and dropping all attempts to influence the Maliki government, the administration stood aloof while Noor al-Maliki, essentially a primitive tribal leader in a fancy suit, deliberately trashed the laboriously (not to mention bloodily) established postwar status quo. The smartest man of his epoch somehow couldn’t foresee how this was going to work out.
● The China Seas confrontation. The administration has allowed the Chinese to get away with their “blue territory” scam at direct cost to our closest allies in the region with minimal response. I guess that “swing toward the Pacific” is still in mid-motion.
● The rape of Ukraine. The sole reason Putin hasn’t seized the rest of Ukraine must be that he can’t believe what he’s being allowed to get away with. For all the reaction from the White House, he could reoccupy Ukraine, the Asian republics, Alaska, and then move on to Canada with no serious worries.
That’s a good solid dozen. We could go on, of course (Afghanistan hasn’t been mentioned yet), but this is more than enough to establish the Obama administration as the worst foreign policy presidency in the American chronicle, bar none.
...But in fact, it’s all a result of long-term leftist ideas, chief among them, in the case of foreign policy, that A) the United States is the source of the world’s ills, and B) Remove American influence and the world will soon revert to a humanist, collectivist modus vivendi.
...What can be done? Very little, at this point. To consider otherwise is to assume that this crew of losers -- Obama, Hagel, Rice, Power, and a cast of thousands -- can somehow undo what they set in motion through their own stupidity and self-delusion in the first place. (This is to assume that you can attract Obama’s attention without calling airstrikes against every golf course on the planet). With the coming collapse of Iraq, the avalanche is in motion and cannot be stopped. The best strategy is to ride it out and prepare to pick up the pieces.
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