Posted tagged ‘President Reject Obama’

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries

Obama, pre-July 4th, rips Trump-fueled ‘nationalism’

July 3, 2017

Obama, pre-July 4th, rips Trump-fueled ‘nationalism’, Washington Times, Cheryl K. Chumley, July 3, 2017

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, center, waves as he walks with his wife Michelle, left, and daughter Malia, rear, upon arrival for a tour at Borobudur Temple in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, June 28, 2017. Obama and his family

To Obama, failing to fight climate change is tantamount to racism — not to mention silly sovereign politicking.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” Obama’s all about the world view. Trump’s “America First,” and all the other countries, second. Obama? Reverse that. Throw in some hefty taxes and spread the wealth — and then and only then, does America make the list.

************************

Barack Obama, never one to shy from ripping a Republican in the public eye, took occasion from his childhood hometown Jakarta to tear into President Donald Trump for — at root — having too much patriotism.

Call it Fourth of July celebrations, Obama style. America waves Ol’ Glory; Obama beats the global drum.

“The world is at a crossroads,” Obama said, to the Fourth Congress of the Indonesian Diaspora, The Hill reported.

 The overall theme of his message?

Countries ought not pursue sovereign national interests at the risk of the rest of the world. He was speaking largely of the Paris climate accord, and the need for global powers to embrace it.

But he was focused on those who stood opposed to joining it.

Hmm, wonder of whom he spoke? Could it be Trump, who’s flatly refused to jump on the Paris accord train?

To Obama, failing to fight climate change is tantamount to racism — not to mention silly sovereign politicking.

“We start seeing a rise in sectarian politics, we start seeing a rise in an aggressive kind of nationalism, we start seeing both in developed and developing countries an increased resentment about minority groups and the bad treatment of people who don’t look like us or practice the same faith as us,” he said, The Hill reported.

Of course, Obama didn’t use Trump’s name.

But just in case you missed the subtle hint, Obama also noted “the temporary absence of American leadership” on combating climate change.

The change in leadership style, post-Obama, present Trump, couldn’t be more different. Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” Obama’s all about the world view. Trump’s “America First,” and all the other countries, second. Obama? Reverse that. Throw in some hefty taxes and spread the wealth — and then and only then, does America make the list.

Thankfully, it’s Trump who won last November — not the Obama-light candidate of Hillary Clinton. That alone, heading into July Fourth celebrations, is fireworks worthy. Patriotic Americans have at least four years of being considered important, in the eyes of the White House — not just tools to advance a global agenda.

Categories: Climate change, Globalism, Obama's America, President Reject Obama, Trump agenda, Trump's America
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

What Hath Barack Wrought?

January 8, 2017

What Hath Barack Wrought? PJ Media, Michael Walsh, January 7, 2017

obama-salman-saudi-sized-770x415xtObama and Saudi “king” Salman (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst – RTS77JX

Over at the Weekly Standard, my friend Lee Smith — one of the shrewdest voices in American journalism on the subject of the Middle East and foreign policy — takes the measure of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. It ain’t pretty:

The Obama chapter in American foreign policy ends like the climax of an action movie—with a fireball growing in the distance and filling the screen as a man in silhouette approaches in slow motion and then veers off camera. Barack Obama has set the Middle East on fire, and now it’s spreading.

The Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran has emboldened the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, which now makes war openly in four Arab states (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen) and is a growing threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The deal with Tehran that Obama boasts of as his signature foreign policy initiative guarantees, as the president himself acknowledged, that Iran will have an industrial-scale nuclear weapons program within 15 years.

After a 40-year absence from the Middle East, Russia has returned to the region, where it bombs Syria’s schools and hospitals as America and Europe watch helplessly. Washington’s traditional regional allies are scrambling to adjust to the new reality, which for the likes of Israel, Jordan, and Turkey means an opportunistic power on their borders that is allied with their existential enemies.

For Europe, the millions seeking refuge from the conflagration are agents of potential instability on the continent in the years to come; some in their midst are terrorists plain and simple. In just four years, or one presidential term, a civil uprising that started in Syria became a great Middle Eastern war over a host of sectarian, religious, and political hostilities dating back centuries.

Naturally, the country’s first affirmative action president doesn’t see it that way; no doubt, by his lights, he’s still every bit the equal of FDR and Abraham Lincoln he’s always thought himself to be. For a chief executive like Barack Hussein Obama, coddled practically from birth by a series of handlers, sycophants, media worshipers, excuse-makers and hagiographers, being an utter failure means never having to say you’re sorry.  The half-black president with the Muslim name was supposed to at least bring some cultural empathy to the thorny, if not to say intractable, problems of the Middle East — not just the eternal Arab-Israeli conflict but the even more eternal Muslim-Muslim conflict, not to mention the collateral damage of the one-sided Muslim-Christian conflict. That he hasn’t solved any of it is not his fault, but that he has exacerbated it most surely is.

Critics and even admirers of the president say that Syria will be a stain on his record. But that’s not how Obama sees it. The death and suffering of so many undoubtedly pains him, as he says. He says he wonders if he could have done anything else. Of course he could have, but he believed he had better reasons not to….

Obama’s foreign policy issued in part from his understanding of global realities but more from his interpretation of the American character. He believed that Americans tend to make a mess of things around the world. Obama is like a narrator in a Graham Greene novel; in our relations with the rest of humanity, as he sees it, we are 300 million naïfs abroad, whose intentions may be good but who lack the tragic sense that the rest of the world feels in its bones.

So who’s the naif now? Obama was less a Graham Green figure than Mark Twain’s Innocent Abroad. The way Smith sees it, Obama’s entire rationale was to wean America from what he saw as its shoot-first second nature; his entire foreign-policy apparatus became Dickens’ Circumlocution Office from Little Dorrit, dedicated to the proposition of How Not to Do It:

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

And that’s the Obama foreign policy in a nutshell. Of course in domestic affairs, the Choom Ganger from Punahou has been the exact opposite, baldly lying about such sub-rosa proclivities as same-sex marriage and hairy transvestites in the ladies’ loo until he was well past his final election. In both areas, however, he’s been a disgrace to the office and to the country, and we will be well rid of him when he finally leaves on Jan. 20.

Obama’s foreign policy, in the end, was not primarily about the rest of the world—it was about transforming the character of America. So where are we eight years on? Gelded, as he intended.

And, to coin a phrase, that’s one of the many reasons we now have Donald Trump. America never has been and never will be a neutered metrosexual among nations. As the Obama-ites are about to find out.

Categories: Foreign policy, Obama and America's allies, Obama and America's enemies, Obama and Middle East, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Obama Legacy: Those golden years

January 6, 2017

The Obama Legacy: Those golden years, Israel National News, Joe David, January 6, 2016

Despite the tears you have caused us over the years with your many spankings, we are all very thankful in the end for the main thing you have done for us. You have given us “deplorables” back our common sense.

**********************

There is talk that President Barack Hussein Obama is concerned about his political legacy once he is out of office. This is nonsense. Nothing he has ever done during his presidency could tarnish his eight years in the White House. Valerie Jarrett, the President’s closest advisor, said it all so well when she reminded the world on CNN that during the Obama Administration there was never a scandal.

She is absolutely correct. Not one single word of an indiscretion was ever written about him by the establishment media during his years in the White House and barely a word of criticism. That’s because the media felt that everything he did was always for the glory of our country – including those trillions of dollars of debt that he so unceremoniously incurred for America with his generous give-away programs.

In just eight years, the former senator from Illinois whose background has never been satisfactorily clarified has given new and rich meaning to the word patriotism.

Unlike President-Elect Donald J. Trump who began surrounding himself from the start with conspicuously successful and intelligent advisors devoted to protecting the American dream, while the Obama administration, from the start, generously began to give our financial resources away to aliens and foreign countries begging for their share of America’s prosperity. When I reminisce over all the wondrous things that occurred under his presidency, from exposing racially motivated cops to enabling ISIS, I can only wonder. Imagine for once in our lifetime, we have had a President, one mere mortal, dedicated to his promise of real hope and change for all.

To summarize the Obama administration’s entire legacy would require volumes. Nevertheless, here are a few exciting moments that occurred during his watch. Some of the moments his administration gave us during his two terms in office include, but are not limited to:

  • Providing people of ambiguous gender with the freedom to use the public toilet of their choice.
  • Allowing late night celebrations with occasional rioting and looting to celebrate the end of racism in America.
  • Encouraging large corporations to move their plants to needy countries around the world where they can enjoy large tax breaks and cheaper labor.
  • Abandoning old friends in order to buy a new friend with a plane load of money secretly delivered at night, when no one was supposed to have been looking.
  • Signing into law by executive order ambitious policies, which Congress would never have approved.
  • Screening airport passengers, not with intelligence and sophistication as was once the case, but in a way that would demonstrate TSA’s skill at intimate pat downs and body scans.
  • Hurling racism calls at anyone who needed to be silenced once and for all for their objectionable views.
  • Installing security guards at border points to allow the safe entry and exit of undocumented visitors, especially those carrying huge loads of contraband.
  • Offering new identities, food stamps, lodging, income, and, when appropriate, voting cards to immigrants, landing in remote U.S. areas of the country late at night, for their willingness to influence America’s cultural change.
  • Using political correctness as another sophisticated tool for silencing opposing views on campuses, in board rooms, and at parties when riots, sit-ins, and shout-downs don’t work.
  • Reducing the guest list at Guantanamo by returning the residents to their loving families abroad, where they may continue their noble crusade for peace through genocide.
  • Politicalizing the FBI and Department of Justice in order to accelerate hope and change among Americans who may not want it – and those in government who may need it to protect their reputation.
  • Using Air Force One as the President’s private carrier for vacations and lecture tours to world capitals, in which America’s past activities are discussed apologetically with appropriate shame.
  • Introducing two new words, Allāhu akbar, to the vocabulary of students interested in joining a growing international movement.
  • Supporting as a Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodman Clinton, whose impressive résumé includes e-mail indiscretions, Benghazi, and pay-to-play deals while Secretary of State.
  • And expecting Americans to accept Obamacare, a limited health care program that few really want and even fewer can afford because of its swiftly escalating costs.

Yes, there’s no question about it. Mr. Obama’s presidency will long be remembered, especially his parting shots at Russia and Israel, and God only knows who else.

Goodbye, Mr. Ex. None of us hard-working Americans will ever forget you. You are absolutely right about Mr. Trump. Time will prove that his electoral landslide is the result of Russia’s meddling, not anything you or Ms. Clinton did to bring about such dramatic party change.

Despite the tears you have caused us over the years with your many spankings, we are all very thankful in the end for the main thing you have done for us. You have given us “deplorables” back our common sense.

Categories: 2016 elections, Obama's legacy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Obama years stumble to a cheesy climax

January 3, 2017

The Obama years stumble to a cheesy climax, Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, January 2, 2017

democrats_frustrated_state_parties_15878-jpg-8a8bd_c0-258-4908-3119_s885x516In this May 15, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama sits with Attorney General Eric Holder during the 32nd annual the National Peace Officers Memorial Service on Capitol Hill in Washington. Obama has announced plans to improve Democrats down-ballot fortunes

Everyone only thought the interregnum between presidents was “the natural transition,” an orderly march to the beat of neither knives, nor guns or even stones. It’s the way Americans have conducted themselves since George Washington turned the house key over to John Adams.

Until this time. A few embittered denizens of Bubba World pulled a few childish tricks as they left the White House, such as extracting the “W” key from typewriter keyboards. Hillary decamped with a few pieces of her favorite White House furniture. But she sent it back, probably on the advice of lawyers versed in the criminal code. She and Bubba might have been tempted to swipe the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, but it was so broken down from harsh use by campaign donors that it probably wasn’t worth taking. But no knives have been unsheathed over the centuries, no guns drawn.

Barack Obama is obsessed with what he calls his “legacy,” but doesn’t seem to understand what a legacy is. It’s not something a president or anyone else can write or devise, to put it on a scroll for the National Archives, to be taken out to be read in a ceremony on the Fourth of July.

An authentic presidential legacy is the record of everything a president has done, all the good and bad that he will be remembered for, and President Obama will have a lot to be remembered by and for. A lot of it is what he didn’t deliver of what he promised eight years ago. Someone, perhaps Hillary, perhaps John Podesta, the Democratic campaign chairman, should tell him about the moving finger, the one that writes in bold and legible letters, so that not a single line of all the piety and wit his speechwriters can concoct can be recalled.

President Obama arrived in Washington on the wings of his promise to cool the rancor between the races, the nation’s saddest and most enduring inheritance of slavery, and he leaves Pennsylvania Avenue having only made things worse. That was the promise that won the 2008 election, and four years later the voters, including the majority whites who are so fashionably disdained now, still gave him the benefit of the doubt out of an abundance of good wishes and good faith.

His promise to make the transition to the administration of Donald Trump easy is similarly worthless. The new president will bring to office an agenda with radically different priorities — which is why the people of the 50 states elected him — and Mr. Obama is doing everything he can to lay traps and land mines in the Donald’s paths, few of which he would have dared earlier.

He has banned oil drilling in the Atlantic off the eastern coast, seized land for monuments to radical environmental causes, protected federal funding for fraud and the profitable abortion schemes of Planned Parenthood, transferred terrorists in a last-minute, desperate attempt to empty the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and last but by no means least, did what he could — and it was a lot — to permanently cripple Israel’s ability to deter the Palestinians who, with the assistance of their radical Islamic neighbors, promise to wipe the Jewish state “off the map.” Rarely if ever since the Nazi era has there been such blatant public spite taken against Jews.

The president has done what he could to people the federal bureaucracy with new appointments designed to disable the new president at the beginning of his administration, with appointments to boards and commissions ranging from the National Council on Disability to the Amtrak Board of Directors to the boards of visitors to the military academies.

“He’s doing all this stuff as his legacy,” says Newt Gingrich, the former speaker and onetime candidate for president. “If he goes through three more weeks of this stuff, who is the country going to think is the extremist? Trump? Or Obama.”

Indeed. Barack Obama has always portrayed himself as a man of dignity and repute, aspiring to stateliness, and now in his last days in office he’s acting, in the words of one pundit, as if “Obama and John Kerry are tenants who trash the place as they are being evicted.”

Some of the dead-end Democrats are even urging Mr. Obama to try, like a mouse in pursuit of a piece of cheese discovered in a rat hole, to exploit a loophole in the law that could enable him to put Merrick Garland on the U.S. Supreme Court with a recess appointment in the few seconds between the Obama and the Trump presidencies.

The president-elect has moderated his Twitter feed. “Too bad,” he says of the Obama mischief, “but we will get it done, anyway.”

Categories: 2016 elections, Obama and transition, Obama's legacy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Obama: A Political Corpse

January 1, 2017

Obama: A Political Corpse, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, January 1, 2016

Obama’s political death — the Russians have tagged him “a political corpse” — is spurring him and his administration to deny it by undertaking a series of ever more outrageous acts to preserve what he considers his “legacy.” Michael Walsh summed up Obama’s week: “Stab Israel, provoke Russia, grab land — even the nuttiest Leftist has to admit Obama is out of control.”

*****************************************

My mother’s almost ninety-eight years old. While in relatively good physical and mental health considering her advanced age, she has in recent years developed a very strong denial of death and its effects, infusing a level of irrationality to some exchanges with her.

On a recent visit, we had this conversation:

Mother: “I can’t understand why your father doesn’t call.”

Me: “Mother, you know he’s been dead for eleven years.”

Mother: “Yes, I know that, but I still don’t understand why he hasn’t called.”

Me: “Dead men can’t call.”

(Brief pause)

Mother: “He could call collect.”

Obama’s political death — the Russians have tagged him “a political corpse” — is spurring him and his administration to deny it by undertaking a series of ever more outrageous acts to preserve what he considers his “legacy.” Michael Walsh summed up Obama’s week: “Stab Israel, provoke Russia, grab land — even the nuttiest Leftist has to admit Obama is out of control.”

Obama hopes his party’s diminished power over his two terms will be without effect. President-Elect Trump and those who support him see it differently — the corpse is spewing toxic pathogens, which will not survive a thorough cleansing.

As a culmination of his eight years in office in which he was unsuccessful in persuading Israel to commit suicide by caving in to further Palestinian demands to give up yet more land for no peace or even a recognition of its right to exist, he manipulated a UN resolution which would have the same effect.

Secretary of state Kerry followed up with an attempted justification of the betrayal of Israel in the UN. The speech was so outrageous that Britain and Australia rebuked it.  I Indeed, it was so bad that it resulted in a rare show of bipartisanship as leaders of both parties were critical of it:

In his remarks, he may finally have done what eight years of Obama’s anti-Israel acts have failed to do — made clear the anti-Semitic basis of this animus, thereby  weaning  more Jews from the Democratic Party.

In this context of claiming that Israeli policy was “leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation,” Kerry admonished: “If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both.” Presumably, Kerry was referring to the fact that Israel has a significant Arab-Muslim population. He conveniently did not mention, since it must never be mentioned, the vow of Mahmoud Abbas (the Palestinian leader Kerry sees as Israel’s “peace partner”) that, “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — soldier or civilian — on our lands.” Implicitly, of course, if Kerry is saying that a country with a Muslim minority cannot maintain its Jewish character and still abide by democratic principles, then neither can the United States maintain its Judeo-Christian character and still abide by democratic principles — notwithstanding that our Judeo-Christian character is the basis for our belief in the equal dignity of all men and women, a foundational democratic principle. It is a principle one does not find in classical Islam, the law of which explicitly elevates Muslims over non-Muslims and men over women.

As the author makes clear, the Department of State had no problem when it oversaw the drafting of the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan as democratic Islamic states.

Democratic Party efforts to defeat Trump through ginned up riots, slanderous accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-Semitism having failed to schlep the unappealing Hillary Clinton into the winner’s circle, moved on to Obama’s efforts to delegitimize his successor. Electoral College intimidation, riots, pointless recounts weren’t enough to do that job. This week, Obama claimed that Russians “hacked” the election. No proof of this has been offered up, nor can it. Even Rolling Stone was not persuaded and found that the joint FBI/Homeland Security report released by the administration didn’t make that case.

This report is long on jargon but short on specifics. More than half of it is just a list of suggestions for preventive measures.

[snip]

But we don’t learn much at all about what led our government to determine a) that these hacks were directed by the Russian government, or b) they were undertaken with the aim of influencing the election, and in particular to help elect Donald Trump.

[snip]

Nothing quite adds up.

Nevertheless, ignoring how unsecure were Hillary’s and the DNC communications systems, using this pretext, Obama decided to expel 35 Russians with diplomatic standing and shut down two of their compounds.

Rolling Stone called this “an oddly weak and ill-timed response”

Tom Lipscomb had a stronger characterization: “Never in the diplomatic history of the United States have 35 members of any diplomatic mission been sent home while our nations were not at war. Obama is clearly insane. There was no consultation with any other branch of the government on this, I would have him interned in Hawaii pending mental examination and swear in Biden for the duration.”

David Goldman was more temperate but not the least bit less critical: “Let’s see: John Podesta and the DNC rig the Democratic primaries to favor Clinton against Sanders, which is blatant abuse of power if not outright criminality. Someone leaks the emails and exposes Podesta’s misdeeds. This makes the DNC look bad. And now Obama et. al. claim that LEAKING the evidence of DNC misdeeds was the crime, rather than the misdeeds themselves. That’s a better (if less economical) definition of Chutzpah than the fellow who kills his parents and asks for leniency on the grounds that he’s an orphan.”

Iowahawk also had some thoughts on this.

John Podesta, like 100% of everyone who has ever had a email account, received a password phishing email. He fell for it.

According to some accounts, the phishing email had Russian fingerprints/characteristics in its metadata.

Whatever the case, the password purloiners downloaded his emails, which eventually got into the hands of Wikileaks, who made them public.

The emails were mildly embarrassing, revealing frequent circle jerking between the DNC and journalists. Mostly embarrassing to media.

At the time of their release (Oct) they were hardly covered by any media, and largely dismissed as a big fat nothingburger.

Not one of the people whose emails were revealed has ever disputed their authenticity or provenance.

Fast forward to December. The October nothingburger has now magically transformed into “vote hacking” and “election hacking.”

New narrative: treasonous Trump operatives conspired with Putin to hypnotically mesmerize Clinton voters into pulling the wrong lever.

This is not Alex Jones or angry conspiracy kook Facebook uncles, it’s the NYTs, the WaPo, our beloved State Radio.

How effective has this been? If polls are to be believed, 50%+ of Democrats believe the Russians literally modified vote tallies.

Vladimir Putin swatted away the administration’s response, and in this statement from the Kremlin clearly refused to be baited by this untoward provocation:

We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing US administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-US relationship. This runs contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people. Considering the global security responsibilities of Russia and the United States, this is also damaging to international relations as a whole.

As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind. Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.

The diplomats who are returning to Russia will spend the New Year’s holidays with their families and friends. We will not create any problems for US diplomats. We will not expel anyone. We will not prevent their families and children from using their traditional leisure sites during the New Year’s holidays. Moreover, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited in Russia to the New Year and Christmas children’s parties in the Kremlin.

It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner. Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.

My season’s greetings also to President-elect Donald Trump and the American people.

I wish all of you happiness and prosperity.

With less publicized actions, the administration is cranking out thousands of regulations in an effort to tie the incoming administration’s hands.

President Obama’s lame duck administration poured on thousands more new regulations in 2016 at a rate of 18 for every new law passed, according to a Friday analysis of his team’s expansion of federal authority.

While Congress passed just 211 laws, Obama’s team issued an accompanying 3,852 new federal regulations, some costing billions of dollars.

He’s also instituting “job killing midnight lawsuits” and rushing to fill job openings in federal agencies.

He’s still grabbing up ever more land and placing it under federal control.

When you think of a national monument, you probably think of a beautiful statue or some stately structure that honors a former president. They’re nice to have, nice to go look at. You probably don’t think of a “national monument” as 1.5 million acres of land that contains crucial natural resources the nation needs, but thanks to the national monument designation, can’t touch.

Welcome once again to the final days of the Obama presidency, in which the whole point is to take abuse of executive power to new and, Obama hopes, irreversible new heights. Screw your neighbors. Screw your own country. You’ve got nothing to lose at this point, and you think you’ve come up with a way to do it that leaves your successor helpless to reverse your abuses once you’re gone. One day it’s drilling in the Atlantic and the Arctic. The next it’s the de facto declaration of war against one of your best allies.

Now you’ve decided to make official what you’ve long believed — that all property ultimately belongs to the state, whose primary interest in said property is to prevent said land from ever benefiting the people in any way. And if that means you’re seizing 1.5 million acres on the thinnest of premises, hey, you’re Barack Obama. At this point, it’s what you do:

[snip]

Obama sees governing as a form of ideological combat. However much he may pretend he wants to help Trump get off to a good start, his actions say exactly the opposite. This gigantic federal land grab is only the latest example of Obama cleverly abusing executive powers in his waning days to hamstring the incoming administration, while structuring his actions in such a way that Trump can’t simply revoke what Obama has done.

President-elect Trump is cutting short the usual inaugural parade and limiting the number of balls so he can hit the ground running. He’ll need to if he is to purge these toxic actions.

Happy New Year to you all. It’s going to be a new day here in the nation’s capital and, I hope, around the country and world.

 

Categories: Obama and The World, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, The end of Obama's presidency, Transition
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Obama mouse that roared

December 30, 2016

The Obama mouse that roared, Israel National News, Ron Jager, December 30, 2016

(Please see also, Egyptian Daily Close To Egyptian Intelligence Reveals Minutes Of Secret Palestinian Authority Meeting With John Kerry, Susan Rice; U.S.-Palestinian Coordination On UNSC 2334; Rice Says Trump Administration’s Policy Will Be ‘Dangerous’. — DM)

Obama has been perceived for the better part of the past 8 years by many of the world’s leadership as a spineless and weak leader, never feeling comfortable or really knowing how to implement the art of statesmanship. Obama caved in to Putin, the leader of Russia, caved into Assad, the embattled leader of Syria.

China, Iran, North Korea, Libya, have all exhibited nothing but contempt for Obama who always backed down, stood down, and generally did nothing more than wag his Presidential tail.

And then there was Israel.

The objective of the recent Obama-concocted Security Council resolution against the State of Israel is nothing less than a betrayal of the US- Israel alliance and a message to Trump. The Security Council adopted a resolution that brands the Jewish presence in any part of Judea and Samaria (‘West Bank’) or in parts of Jerusalem as illegal will also make the eight hundred thousand Jews in these areas international outlaws.

However, this betrayal of Israel is in actuality Obama’s lame duck way of signaling to the new Trump administration that he has no intention of letting President-elect Trump, the democratically elected President revoke the so-called “transformation’’ that Obama has set for America over the past 8 years. Obama’s action in the UN comes from his longtime distaste for Israel and from his newly found distaste for Trump and everything that Trump stands for. Obama has a lot of “unfinished business” and primal anger concerning Trump’s victory, exposing the Democratic Party and its leader for what they are, hated by Middle America and totally detached from the traditional values of so many Americans.

Obama’s last minute stab-in-the-back of Israel is intriguing considering that he did this with full knowledge that Trump would take an opposite position within weeks. Obama’s decision was based not on strategic thinking or any political pressures of any kind. To understand what motivated Obama, in the guise of condemning Israel, America’s only longtime democratic ally in the Middle East, we must understand his deep and powerful animus against the incoming Trump administration.

Trumps’ greatest sin other than actually winning the election has been that he has exposed the true legacy of Obama. Trump, the unapologetic, wealthy, champion of Middle America is everything that Obama is not. Trump embodies Obama’s worst nightmare and is an antithesis to how Obama envisions America. He is leaving the White House knowing full well that President Trump, in Obama’s own words. will “reverse progress” of the Obama’s Presidential period.

Trump has successfully shared with all Americans the true Obama domestic legacy: BlackLivesMatter, cop killings and violence in the streets, transgenderism,  the failure and bankruptcy of Obamacare,  unrestricted immigration, terror attacks on American soil, and a 10 trillion dollar increase in national debt.

Obama has generally corrupted all three branches of government through the use of Presidential directives ignoring the authority and constitutional mandate of Congress and the Senate,  and by empowering governmental agencies such as the IRS to selectively hound organizations that did not adopt Obama’s vision of America.

Internationally, Obama’s legacy has been even worse: allowing the Islamic terror genie out of the bottle,  half a million dead in Syria, the Muslim refugee invasion of Europe which could lead to the breakup of the EU, the rise of Iran as a conventional power that is devouring one Sunni country after another, the diminution of American power and prestige enabling Russia to invade and conquer neighboring countries, and finally, legitimizing the BDS movement and the criminalization of Israel by encouraging the Security Council of the UN to make Israel a pariah state.

This showdown between Obama and Trump has been unavoidable and in the making since day one of Trump’s declaration to be elected President. The Liberal elite and intelligentsia have failed in shoving down Middle America’s throat their vision of what America should be, Obama has not yet internalized that his 8 years of empty promises and the attempted transformation of America have come to an end, with very little to show for his efforts.

In the coming 3 weeks of what remains of the Obama Presidency, President-elect Trump and the State of Israel should prepare for the worst and expect Obama to take revenge against American voters who chose Trump. He can be expected to do the same against Israel for standing up to Obama for the past 8 years exposing his nothingness, his empty beliefs and his empty panaceas that have failed one by one. Obama will continue with his political carnage until his last day in office in a manner that is unbefitting to the office of the  President.

Obama is fond of quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s line, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The Republican Party controls all three branches of government, to the detriment of everything Obama has achieved in the past eight years. President Trump will build an American tent that will include all and be a beacon to the world. Israel will succeed in rescinding the Security Council decision sooner rather than later and continue to build coalitions with neighboring Sunni nations in the coming years and maintain expanding relations with most nations of the World.

Obama will fail in his last ditch efforts to forge his vision of a brave new world, leaving nothing more than a memory of a mouse that roared.

Categories: 2016 elections, Israel, Obama and Israel, Obama and leadership, Obama and Palestinians, Obama and The World, Obama and Trump, Obama's America, Obama's foreign failures, Obama's legacy, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Israel, Trump and Middle East, Trump's America
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Dem lawmaker: Israel waging ‘war on the American government’

December 27, 2016

Dem lawmaker: Israel waging ‘war on the American government’, Washington Examiner, Kelly Cohen, December 26, 2016

(How deplorably ungrateful of wicked Israel after all that Obama has done to for her. — DM)

mcdermotRep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., says Israelis attacking Obama for not giving them ‘everything they want.’ (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”

*******************************

A retiring Democratic congressman warned that the war-of-words over the United Nations’ vote on Israel settlements is the beginning of a rhetorical “war on the American government” by Israel.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., made the comments Monday in an interview with MSNBC when asked to react to accusations that the Israeli government has proof that the Obama administration helped influence the U.N. Security Council’s vote to condemn Israeli settlements.

Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., had said earlier on MSNBC that the Israelis would be sharing the proof to the incoming Trump administration only.

“What we are seeing is the beginning of a war on the American government [by Israel],” McDermott said in response to Dermer.

“We’re seeing the air war right now, we’re seeing all these tweets, all this kind of innuendo and all these half stories, and all this stuff is to create tremendous tension,” McDermott explained.

He added that creating the tension will help President-elect Donald Trump begin the “ground war” when he takes over the White House next month. That, McDermott said, is when “his appointees begin to carry out his actions in the departments across the government.”

“The American people are being subjected to a campaign of anxiety production,” McDermott said. “And it really is very, very disturbing to watch.”

McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”

Israel is now “running their own war against us and our policies” because they are angry that Obama has pushed back against telling them to stop with settlements, McDermott said.

Categories: Democrats, Israel, Israeli settlements, Jim McDermott, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Israel, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Bye Bye, Obama

December 26, 2016

Bye Bye, Obama, PJ Media, Michael Ledeen, December 25, 2016

(Please see also, Is real change coming to Iran? Get ready for March 15, 2017. — DM)

maddog

What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again?  The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago.  He ought to be thinking it through.

Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom.  The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.

***********************

As I promised, as the days of Obama draw down, the jihadis are stepping up the terror tempo.  They know that there will be no reprisals from the Oahu links, and they fear Trump’s lineup of tough guys in the cabinet, so they’re in a hurry to kill infidels while the killing’s good. Therefore we, along with the other Western nations, are at maximum risk right now, until roundabouts January 20th.

And the killing’s plenty good, isn’t it?  Berlin,  Zurich, Ankara, Moscow, with a very nasty plot uncovered in Melbourne, and yet another involving terrorists in Detroit, Maryland, and Virginia.  Not to mention the ongoing slaughter in Syria, and, on Christmas day, Cameroon.

What does the “western world” do in response?  Declare the Western Wall “occupied territory.” This is no accident, since the jihadis believe that they have unleashed holy war against infidels.  That war will not end, in their view, until we infidels have been crushed and subjected to the will of a caliph.  They’ve got plenty of support from the Russians, without whom thousands of Iranians and Iranian proxies would have been killed in Syria and Iraq, and the Assad regime would have been destroyed.

That would have been a better world, but Obama did not want that world.  Nor did the feckless Europeans, who act as if profits on Iran trade compensate for the open subversion of public order.  Indeed, as Christmas arrived we were treated to the spectacle of the bishop of Rome—aka Pope Francis–blaming material misery for the jihadist assault on the West. Thus the first Jesuit pontiff surrenders the moral high ground to his mortal enemies.

Maybe Obama should convert and run for pope.

Paradoxically, the jihadis and their secular allies are launching their new assault just as they are suffering systematic setbacks on the battlefield, their own internal conflicts are intensifying, and there are signs of a religious and patriotic revival within the boundaries of their archenemy, the United States. Walter Russell Mead neatly catches the irony that, just as Obama handed the Palestinians a resounding political victory, a sober look at the situation suggests that the Palestinians have not been this weak, this divided, or this helpless in many decades.

In like manner, the Iranian regime, flush with its success in Aleppo, is increasingly riven.  Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has had two medical events in the past 10 days, and the scrambling for the succession has resumed.  You may have noticed that General Qasem Soleimani has returned to the front pages, which invariably happens when the leader is ill; the Revolutionary Guards want him as the strongman of the next regime (he can’t be supreme leader for lack of theological standing, but he could still be a dominant figure). And it isn’t all peaches and cream for Soleimani, as recent demonstrations in Tehran against the rape of Aleppo make clear. Iranian apologists love to tell us that Persian nationalism  overwhelms internal tribal and sectarian divisions, but Iran has lost thousands in Syria, and the Persian nationalists don’t like their husbands and sons dying to save Bashar Assad.

What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again?  The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago.  He ought to be thinking it through.

Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom.  The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.

You never know. Life is full of surprises.

Categories: Islamic terrorism, Islamist terror attacks, Israel, Israeli settlements, Obama and Iran, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama and The World, Palestinian state, Palestinians, President Elect Trump, President Reject Obama, Trump and Iran, Trump and Israel, Trump appointments, Two state solution, UN and Israel, UN Security Council
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes

December 20, 2016

Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes, Power Line, Scott Johnson, December 20, 2016

Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. As President Obama prepares to depart office, Mr. Karo offers optimistic thoughts on what he believes to be Obama’s ultimate failure:

Watching Hillary Clinton’s sad soiree, and the shrinking Obama persona displayed in his latest PBS interview, make the Democratic titans seem enmeshed in a sort of Greek tragedy. Hillary’s self-destruction is all too obvious; but Obama’s strikes me as equally tragic, and equally apparent on reflection. And it reminded me of parallels from another tragic self-defeating President. But his is over; Hillary’s is almost over; Obama’s is just beginning its third act. One could title the play:

Obama Agonistes

Barack Obama will be the first President ever to not literally depart the scene after his successor is sworn in. It is a powerful image and metaphor, the act of the former President boarding the helicopter (think Nixon and his defiant “V”s) or the Presidential jet to leave Washington, to literally leave the scene to his successor. Even the perennial gadfly, Jimmy Carter, took that one last ride on the Presidential jet to return to Georgia. Washington belongs to the elected President, not the retired one.

But Obama will not do that. He will drive (well, be driven) a few scant miles to a house in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, where he can watch at close range as his legacy is revealed not to be one. From his front-row seat, he will watch his eponymous healthcare plan be gutted, watch his foreign policy be repudiated, watch his bureaucratic overreaches be reeled in (please God!), watch conservative judges take the bench, watch his immigration policy melt, watch the military cheer his successor as they never cheered him, watch infrastructure funds build highways and bridges (that will not be named after him) instead of disappearing into the pockets of government union members, watch the American energy revival kick into high gear.

As he watches all this, one wonders whether Obama will appreciate the curious posture he has imposed on the Democratic Party. It is too much to expect Obama to blame himself for the decline in the Party’s presence, at every level of government; but unless he is delusional, he must at least see it. He probably does, given his remarks in his Friday NPR interview that his organizing work “didn’t translate to” Congressional candidates. In the same interview he noted the future of the Democratic Party is the unnamed mass of young people who helped his campaign, omitting reference to any current politician.

Indeed, there are very few Democrats in power at any level who have any plausible claim to be up-and-coming party leaders. The current crop are septuagenarians, and uninspiring ones at that (who would follow Nancy Pelosi into a foxhole? who would fall on a grenade to save Elizabeth Warren? who would be pushed to a microphone by Chuck Schumer?).

With the dismantling of Obama’s signature initiatives, what does the Democratic Party stand for, other than to pine for Obamaism? Numerous Republicans plausibly champion the GOP position on any issue that matters; there are dozens of party leaders on immigration, energy, foreign affairs, national defense, sane budgeting, tax reform, education reform, who are not named Trump. Other than Warren’s identification with big bank harassment, the Democrats have no counterparts. Après moi, le vacuum.

The other curious thing about Obama’s remaining on the scene is that he has no visible friends on it, despite his dominance of his party. He has many toadies. He has his entourage. He even has many sincere admirers. But friends? Name three. Name one.

And in that characteristic, he is very much like the Democratic Antichrist, Richard Nixon. The quintessential Nixon photograph is of him walking on the beach in San Clemente, in a full suit and tie and wingtip shoes, alone except for his dog. Nixon’s post-presidential isolation derived mainly from the political disgrace that led to his resignation; no doubt Obama will have acolytes inviting him to events and interviewing him and basking in his presence. But who will come just to have a drink and talk about the old days or the White Sox? Every visit will be business, every caller seeking something rather than bringing something.

Obama is like Nixon in other ways as well, probably in more ways than the Democrats would ever admit. Both Nixon and Obama were self-made men. Nixon started as an obscure Congressman, Obama was an obscure community organizer (whatever THAT is). Both thrust themselves into the spotlight and into power, and ironically both by allegedly playing dirty (Nixon dubbed “Tricky Dick” by “the Pink Lady,” Helen Gahagan Douglas; Obama escaping criticism altogether despite having his state senate opponents disqualified and having his Republican opponent Jack Ryan’s divorce records mysteriously unsealed in his US Senate race).

Both relied far more on their ability to operate the levers of power than their ability to persuade others to follow them. Both were heavily criticized during their first terms, yet easily won re-election. Both depended far more on the personal loyalty of their staff, less on their experience or counsel. Both reveled in the trappings of the office. Both were very expensive to send on vacation, though to be fair Nixon barely knew the meaning of the word.

Ultimately Obama suffers from the Nixon comparison, for the reasons he will see at close range. Nixon was sought out post-retirement for his counsel; Obama will be asked for his presence, not his wisdom. Nixon’s electoral success was a general one, regionally and culturally, and very much set the scene for the Age of Reagan; Obama’s politics of division manifestly fail for anyone not named Obama. Nixon´s policies, domestic (e.g., creation of OSHA and the EPA, ending gold-backing of Dollars, the Endangered Species Act) and foreign (e.g., the SALT treaty, rapprochement with China, backing Israel) are still with us forty years later. Obama´s will be gone forty weeks later.

And that is where the Agonist tragedy lies. Obama is staying in Washington for two reasons: because he doesn’t truly have friends elsewhere, or any other place he considers home; and because if he doesn’t stay in DC he descends into obscurity. The latter is a struggle he is likely to lose anyway; if ever there were a personality suited to dominate the stage and put his predecessor in the shade, it is Trump.

But Obama will continue the struggle. He will help raise funds, in a social environment where funding matters less. He has no appointment power, so he will have few toadies. Any emerging Democratic leader will be wary of him, as he will only draw attention to himself. He still considers himself the smartest man in any room, despite abundant proof to the contrary. He will never improve in his ability to persuade people to his viewpoint, because he lacks introspection; a man who suffers as many failures as he has in eight years, yet still can’t think of any serious errors he has made, is by definition not learning from his mistakes. And absent holding the levers of power himself, persuasion is the only tool Obama has.

So Obama will soldier on, speaking to any reporter or power player who seeks (or will accept) an audience, pressing his increasingly chimerical policies in a political and legal landscape increasingly tilted against them, sucking the air and vitality away from any of his successors who actually have a chance of implementing them. Due to his own ego, Obama’s struggles will ultimately be self-defeating.

Categories: Nixon and Obama compared, President Reject Obama, Richard Nixon
Tags: ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Requiem for a Narrative

December 9, 2016

Requiem for a Narrative, Washington Free Beacon, , December 9, 2016

President Barack Obama gestures during a U.S. counterterrorism strategy speech at MacDill Air Force Base Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

President Barack Obama gestures during a U.S. counterterrorism strategy speech at MacDill Air Force Base Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

At a dinner in Washington earlier this week—one packed with well-meaning folks who really, really wanted this year’s election to have gone the other way—I heard a speaker cite Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art by way of consoling the audience. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” the poem famously begins. The speaker hastened to remind the room that, later in the poem, we are informed numerous times that losing “is no disaster.” With that in mind, those who didn’t like the election’s result should buck up and dive back into the fight, and so forth.

It didn’t seem like the time or place for me to point out that the poem’s declarations that losing isn’t a disaster are clearly ironic. It also didn’t seem the time to note that among the most important reasons why so many people supported Trump was that they were conscious of a series of painful disasters, the existence of which the Obama administration, abetted by a friendly press, refused to acknowledge. The nature of our politics today—and perhaps immemorially—is that every ambitious mayor or governor of a state feels the need to create a narrative of success: build a stadium or bridge that he can slap his name on, massage the crime statistics to show civic healing, and call it good.

If the reality matches the narrative, so much the better—but you won’t find too many politicians admitting that things haven’t improved, or that they have actually grown worse. Obama and his aides certainly weren’t big on admitting shortcomings, and after the electoral wipeout they have just suffered, it looks like their most lasting impact will be to have discredited the word “narrative” among a large portion of Americans. That’s something, I guess.

For years, Americans were told that after the financial panic in 2008, the president’s policies had put us on a steady course to a strong economy. But in much of the country, people looked around them and thought, That just doesn’t seem right. Especially in those parts of the country hit the hardest by the transition from the Industrial Era to the Information Age, people asked a number of questions. If the economy is doing so great, why are my adult children not moving out? If the unemployment rate is declining, why are so many prime-age males not working? And doesn’t it matter that the quality of jobs for non-college graduates is so obviously worse than it was a generation ago? Why, instead of working, are so many people dependent on public benefits and falling prey to addiction?

All of these questions had answers—but looking to the Obama White House for clarity about the uncomfortable tradeoffs their policies involved was a fool’s errand. Take, as an example, the crusade against coal, pushed by activists and coastal liberals for whom shutting down these companies was a clear and uncomplicated good deed on behalf of Mother Earth, of which the only real victims would be the greedy energy executives. The miners could retrain, or get “green jobs,” or something.

Well, a lot of the coal companies did shut down, or all but shut down. Many of the owners cut their losses and moved on—capital may be inconvenienced, but it generally does not suffer. The workers just lost their jobs. The economy in places like southeastern Ohio wasn’t exactly ready to absorb them, and as for retraining—well, you give that a try when you’re 45 years old. The availability of welfare and disability payments is a bitter replacement for the dignity of an honest, decently paid job. The only good news in some of these regions for much of the last eight years was the fracking revolution, a phenomenon that generally occurred in spite of the president’s best efforts.

We were also told, again and again, that things were going well abroad. The tide of war was receding. Afghans and Iraqis were taking the lead. Osama bin Laden was dead, and al Qaeda was on the run. And people again thought, That just doesn’t seem right. As recently as this Tuesday, President Obama was still at it, telling troops assembled at MacDill Air Force Base (side note: polls suggest that a plurality in that room must have voted for Donald Trump) that, a few bumps in the road notwithstanding, things were going pretty well out there.

Characteristic of the head scratchers in Obama’s speech was this howler: “No foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland.” Elsewhere in the speech the president cited the “homegrown and largely isolated individuals” who killed Americans in Orlando, San Bernardino, Boston, and Fort Hood, and who were “radicalized online.” Never mind the fact that the Fort Hood terrorist exchanged a dozen or so emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric who worked so hard to encourage American Muslims to murder their fellow citizens, or that al Qaeda and ISIS were actively calling for such attacks, and providing instructions for how to carry them out in their online magazines.

People listen to this sort of hairsplitting, and they think, that just doesn’t seem right. One hears the president, during the same speech, praise the campaign against the Islamic State as “sustainable,” and one can’t help but wonder, since when did we want a military effort against a trumped up gang of women-beating thugs like this to be “sustainable”? Swift, yes; crushing, sure; but “sustainable?” How about “victorious”? How about “over”?

“Fake news” is becoming a catch-all explanation for Democrats to explain Hillary Clinton’s loss. Voters didn’t trust Hillary, and didn’t appreciate the great deal they were getting from Obama, because of right-wing lies. The problem with this explanation is that it was hardly necessary for Russian troll farms to sow distrust about the Obama administration, when the administration (not to mention the Clinton campaign!) was itself such a relentless and strategic purveyor of half-truths and convenient omissions. For eight years, the word from the top just didn’t seem right—and the lack of trust such habitual semi-honesty engendered is why the left is very much the author of its own disaster.

Categories: "Fake news", 2016 elections, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Reality vs Narrative
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries