Ouch.
“There are no excuses. The future is up to us,” Obama said.
A steady stream of people walked out of the auditorium while he spoke, however, and a heckler interrupted his remarks.
Tag: Barack Obama
Crisis Formula
It’s like clockwork.
First, Obama’s administration completely drops the ball during a crisis.
Second, Obama appoints a Tsar who is a pure political operative.
Third, we see stories about how angry Obama is about the whole thing.
Fourth, Obama asks for more money.
Next up, Obama will claim inaction by Congress and take some executive actions that have nothing to do with the crisis.
“Extremely Low”
I guess 25% is “extremely low.” Or Obama isn’t actually reading and listening to, much less leading, what his own administration is doing.
The analysis found a nearly 25 percent “probability of Ebola virus disease case importation” to the United States within 3 to 6 weeks.
Nevertheless, President Obama falsely said on September 16 that experts “across our government” agree that America”s Ebola vulnerability was extremely low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also repeatedly assured the American people that the Ebola risk was low, even after the alarming government study was completed.
Essence of the Obama Administration
Here is the essence of the Obama administration’s abyss between word and deed: in the age of the war on women and the end to lobbyists in government, the feminist young aide is alleged to have solicited a prostitute; the most transparent administration in memory covered that fact up during the reelection campaign; the president who promised to end the revolving door and ban lobbyists from government hired not just a one-percenter lobbyist and donor, but his randy son as well.
Just Words
A line from Obama’s economic speech on Thursday is giving Republicans more material to continue slamming their opponents as Obama surrogates. That tactic has been key to Republicans’ midterm strategy this cycle, at a time when a majority of Americans — 52% according to the latest CNN/ORC poll — disapprove of the President’s job.
“I am not on the ballot this fall,” Obama said at Northwestern University on Thursday. “But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”
Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican nominee for Senate in Colorado, already played up the line during an interview Friday.
“foreplay version of war”
The Americans reported 200 airstrikes in two weeks, compared to 3,000 on the first day of the 2003 Iraq invasion. This is the foreplay version of war.
Obama Proven Wrong on Ebola
Yup.
The chances of an Ebola outbreak in the United States are “extremely low,” Obama said. U.S. are working with officials in Africa “to increase screening at airports so that someone with the virus doesn’t get on a plane for the United States.” And then this:
In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home. We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick, and more labs across our country now have the capacity to quickly test for the virus. We’re working with hospitals to make sure that they are prepared, and to ensure that our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely.
Obama added that in the unlikely event an Ebola case appeared in the United States, “we have world-class facilities and professionals ready to respond. And we have effective surveillance mechanisms in place.”
Now two weeks later, the president’s reassurances have turned out to be false.
As far as we can tell, it was easy for a person with Ebola to fly to America from Liberia and our medical facilities were woefully unprepared to handle the consequences.
Barack… I’m just not that into you
From the email…
Obama Skips Intelligence Briefings
No wonder he finds out about what’s going on in the world by watching the news.
A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI)report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014.
The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.
The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Walk the Walk
Heh…
…says the man who jets around in a 747 and just took off in his taxpayer-funded helicopter for Camp David – with Michelle traveling separately, of course. You first, President Obama.
Panetta: Obama Left Iraq Too Early
Panetta has a mastery of the obvious.
Even as the administration attempts to deflect responsibility for the implosion of Iraq, Obama’s former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says he thought we left Iraq too early and waited too long to do anything about Syria. Basically, it’s all Obama’s fault.
Obama and Generals Can’t Agree on Strategy
“The generals and the president can’t even agree on the strategy,” Krauthammer said, “and that’s the one country that’s supposed to be leading all this.”
Ebola “a threat to global security”
Not Iran… not ISIS… not Russia… not even the flu or malaria which are far more deadly… nope. Ebola is the threat to global security.
President Barack Obama has called the West Africa Ebola outbreak “a threat to global security” as he announced a larger US role in fighting the virus.
“The world is looking to the United States,” Mr Obama said, but added the outbreak required a “global response”.
The measures announced included ordering 3,000 US troops to the region and building new healthcare facilities.
Ebola is a nasty disease and I think it is appropriate for the United States to commit CDC resources and attention to helping fight it. I do have a problem with committing the military to it. Obama won’t commit our troops to fighting ISIS, but will to fight Ebola? That ain’t right.
On another note, this is the second time that Obama has had a foreign policy blunder get bumped off the front page for Ebola. It’s a little too convenient.
Why Should Anyone Watch?
White House Tries to Lie About “JV” Characterization
Yeah, that’s not going to fly.
With the passage of eight months, the president’s “JV” comment looks increasingly untenable, so we can understand why the White House spokesman would try to suggest that what is now known as the Islamic State was not the subject of the conversation.
But in quoting from the transcript, Earnest provided a selective reading of the discussion. In particular, he failed to provide the context in which Obama made his remarks — the takeover of Fallujah by ISIS. That’s fairly misleading. The interviewer was certainly asking about ISIS when Obama answered with his “JV” remarks.
Obama Asks for $30 Million to Fight Ebola
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Friday sent Congress a request for $30 million to pay for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to help contain the Ebola outbreak in western Africa.
The administration wants the money added to a spending bill to keep government agencies running until mid-December and comes on top of $58 million it requested above current levels to speed the production of promising drugs to fight the deadly disease.
What bothers me is that the federal government spends nearly $4 trillion per year. It is awash in spending despite not passing a budget in years. But whenever anything comes up, the Obama Administration is there with its hand out asking for more money. Just like when Obama asked Congress for more money for the immigration crisis, he’s asking for more money here. With all of the money in Washington, why is the CDC not already funded to fight disease outbreaks already? Is it poorly managed or is this just part of Obama’s continuing effort to increase spending wherever and whenever he can?
Promises, promises…
How much weight do you think the Estonians are giving Obama’s promises nowadays?
US President Barack Obama has expressed solidarity with Baltic member-states of NATO on a visit to Estonia.
ISIS Beheads Another American
It’s like a punch in the gut. RIP Mr. Sotloff.
ISIS has released a video that shows the beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff and says the murder is retaliation for the Obama administration’s continued airstrikes in Iraq.
Sotloff is the second American journalist to be killed by ISIS, and his death comes two weeks after James Foley was executed in a similar video.
What is ISIS’ objective here? Unless they are completely stupid, which they are not, they do not seriously think that beheading Americans on video will convince the United States to cease air strikes. Clearly they are intending to inflame American public opinion. Why?
Here’s what I think… ISIS is goading American into a ground war with the expectation that we will not do it. By doing this, ISIS looks strong and it becomes a powerful recruiting tool and demoralizes their opponents in the territories they occupy. If America did respond by sending in ground troops in large numbers, ISIS would be screwed. They know that. But they have watched our president. He did nothing in Libya to avenge the death of an Ambassador and others. He did nothing in Syria. He pulled out of Iraq. He’s pulling out of Afghanistan. He did nothing in Ukraine. He’s done nothing as Chinese and Russian forces taunt American assets. Obama staked two campaigns on pulling American forces home and downsizing the military. He is not about to reverse course and be forced to admit that he was wrong to abandon Iraq.
Obama has been weighed, measured, and found wanting. They know he won’t respond with force to the beheading of Americans and they are counting on it.
America recedes on the world stage
Despite the hiatus from the blog, my column for the West Bend Daily News has been running like clockwork. Although it is a slow clock that only chimes on Tuesdays. Here it is.
Much has been said about President Barack Obama spending his time golfing while the world burns. While the imagery may have been exaggerated, the reality is close to the mark. At the very least, as Obama was on Martha s Vineyard enjoying the links, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion troops marched into Ukraine.
This step by Russia has been coming for a while and is a direct result of America’s failed foreign policy under Obama. It has long been known that President Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB agent and Communist strong man, has a passion to return Russia to its former glory as a world power.
In order to advance that goal, Putin staged the invasion and assimilation of Crimea earlier this year. The formula was simple and has been used by tyrants from Mao to Hitler. First, Russia funded and fomented Russian sympathizers in Ukraine to rebel. Second, those sympathizers asked Russia for help to protect them. Third, Russia takes over.
The same thing is playing out for the rest of Ukraine as I write this. Russia instigated and funded a rebellion against the Ukrainian government. Then Russia sent in soldiers and supplies to protect the rebels under the pretense that they are ethnic Russians being persecuted by the Ukrainian government. The next step is obvious. Russia intends to annex all of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Obama has watched this unfold and done nothing. Even when the rebels with Russian missiles shot a civilian airliner out of the sky, Obama did nothing. Now that the Russian invasion is advancing further, Obama held a news conference and promised to perhaps gradually levy some more sanctions on Russia, if the Europeans agree. Putin is acting with impunity precisely because he knows that Obama will not do anything.
Lest one thinks that Ukraine is none of America’s business, it most certainly is. Ukraine is rich with agricultural, manufacturing and natural resources that will vastly strengthen Russia’s position in the world and allow it to dominate European and world affairs. Furthermore, we must not forget that the United States promised to protect Ukraine’s sovereign borders. In 1994 after the breakup of the Soviet Union, President Bill Clinton signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances committing the United States to protect Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.
By breaking that promise, Obama is signaling to our nation’s allies that we will not honor our commitments. The ramifications will be long-reaching.
Why would any nation promise to give up any weapons based on Obama s promises? Iran? Syria? North Korea? And even longtime allies like Japan are rumbling about abandoning their decades-long disarmament because the promise of American security is no longer unassailable. Obama s abandonment of Ukraine to the Russian horde will lead to a more dangerous world.
Just across the Black Sea in the Middle East, another Obama foreign policy debacle is coming to the fore. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has taken control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq with barbaric consequences for all who opposed them. Once again, Obama’s unwillingness to act led to the crisis the world now faces.
When Syrians launched their civil war against the dictator Bashar al-Assad, Obama stood by and refused to support them. After Obama famously drew his red line saying that America would retaliate if Assad used chemical weapons, Assad promptly used them and Obama’s red line was proven to mean nothing. When the rebels were infiltrated and taken over by Islamist terrorist organizations, Obama still did nothing.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, Obama rushed to remove American soldiers for domestic political reasons leaving a vacuum of power and a weak Iraqi government in their wake.
The result is that vacuum is being filled by ISIL. Over two weeks after Obama stopped briefly on his way to a golf game to express sympathy for the vicious beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, by ISIL, Obama again tool to the microphone to address the issue. He declared that we don t have a strategy yet on ISIL and did not give any time frame for when we would have one. Meanwhile, he is spending American treasure and risking American lives on air strikes that he has admitted do not support any broader strategy other than, perhaps, allowing Obama to cast the illusion that he is doing something.
But why does America not have a strategy for ISIL yet? We have known about their growth and advances for years. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said more than a week ago, They’re beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess, they are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything that we ve seen. So we must prepare for everything.
Why haven t we? With all of the resources of the federal government who have known about ISIL for years, why is there not a strategy? It is a dereliction of duty on a presidential scale that America does not have a plan to deal with ISIL even as their followers are tweeting threats from America s streets.
History remembers Nero as playing his lyre as Rome burned. History will remember Obama for his handicap.
(Owen Robinson’s column runs Tuesdays in the Daily News.)
Obama at Laborfest
After arriving in Milwaukee, the president was greeted by Col. James Locke, commander of the 128th Air Refueling Wing, and several Wisconsin politicians. That included Walker, Mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee County Exec Chris Abele and U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee.
Burke campaigned at Laborfest, but announced ahead of time she would not participate in the president’s public event, saying it would not be appropriate because it was an official White House stop.
The Democratic President of the United States comes to Milwaukee. The Republican governor shows up to greet him at the airport as he should. The Democratic candidate for governor is at the same event, but decides to completely avoid being seen with the POTUS.
Burke’s excuse for not greeting or appearing with Obama is a farce. She says that since Obama is visiting in his official capacity, it would be unseemly for her to be there since she is campaigning. Rubbish. Obama was here to campaign. Just listen to his speech and that is clear. And even if he was here as POTUS and not the Campaigner in Chief, there would have been nothing untoward about Burke appearing with him.
Even though Burke’s excuse is flimsy, her campaign logic is interesting. It is obvious that she does not want to be linked too closely to the president because his popularity is sagging and his policies are crashing. And even though Wisconsin voted for Obama twice, it also voted for Scott Walker twice. Yet Burke is trying to have her cake and eat it too. She did meet with Obama privately (apparently it is OK to plot campaign strategy with him in private when he is visiting Milwaukee in his official capacity) and tweeted:
“Great chat w/ @BarackObama in Mke abt WI mfging. Look fwd to seeing him again b4 11/4…esp if its after the @Packers beat da Bears – mb.”
I wonder how this looks to the Democrats in the base. Is it a good thing or a bad thing for them that Burke is running away from Obama?