"What if Obama can't lead?" :o

[Azalin]

Note the tree in the cartoon looks like a baobab tree, native to Africa. Clearly a racist cartoon.

well, I'm embarrassed......I thought that was a portrait of Al Gore.

[B-Man]

JOURNALISM:

 

Juxtaposition Highlights Politics Of Distraction.

 

“But, look, a puppy!!! The Obamas got another dog, a girl puppy this time. Isn’t she cute? She’s named Sunny. Aw, doesn’t that make you feel sunny?”

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

JOURNALISM:

 

Juxtaposition Highlights Politics Of Distraction.

 

“But, look, a puppy!!! The Obamas got another dog, a girl puppy this time. Isn’t she cute? She’s named Sunny. Aw, doesn’t that make you feel sunny?”

 

Well Mitt Romney had a dog, and drove with it on the roof of his car! What an evil bastard! A guy like that would feed grandma dogfood then wheel her over a cliff.

[IDBillzFan]

JOURNALISM:

 

Juxtaposition Highlights Politics Of Distraction.

 

“But, look, a puppy!!! The Obamas got another dog, a girl puppy this time. Isn’t she cute? She’s named Sunny. Aw, doesn’t that make you feel sunny?”

 

If I were Bo, I'd keep my eyes open. Notice larger-than-usual dinner servings lately, Bo? Fewer runs with the kids?

 

You know what they say, Bo. Once you go dog, you never go back.

 

Eyes wide open, Bo. Eyes wide open.

[B-Man]

MICHELLE FIELDS:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omFNIUqtIGQ

[/dev/null]

MICHELLE FIELDS:

 

Forward

[B-Man]

 

 

Not News: Obama and Bloomberg Summer Events Spectacularly Fizzling

 

By: Tom Blumer | August 24, 2013

 

In advance of a month full of events oriented towards demonstrating displeasure with lawmakers who won't give carte blanche to President Obama's healthcare, gun control, "climate change," and immigration agendas, Organizing for Action Executive Director Jon Carson claimed that "We will own August." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns also anticipated high levels of support during this months's "No More Names: National Drive to Reduce Gun Violence" tour.

 

It hasn't happened in either case. If right-wing, tea party, or social conservative efforts fizzled as OFA's and MAIG's clearly are, those failures would be making headlines, and shown as proof that support for the related causes is weak. By contrast, the national establishment press is mostly ignoring and in some cases obscuring these left-wing implosions.

OFA's Action August events have included protest visits to the congressional offices of recalcitrant congresspersons and senators, almost all and possibly completely all of whom are Republicans, phone banks, coordinated letters to the editor meetings, and other public events. Readers here have probably heard very little about them because attendance levels have mostly been pathetic, virtually non-existent, and, in at least one case, completely non-existent. The last thing the national establishment press wants to do is embarrass its beloved Dear Leader — not to mention a legitimate concern that the administration might be monitoring those conveying negative information.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/08/24/not-news-obama-and-bloomberg-summer-events-spectacularly-fizzling#ixzz2cvryekGJ

[Tiberius]

Interesting, Obama has the Catholic Church behind him and the Democrats on this issue and other Christian Churches are following along. It will take leadership to pass this, but I think Obama will prove himself capable of getting this passed

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/politics/catholic-leaders-to-take-immigration-push-to-the-pews.html?src=recg&gwh=520DF816E7E7841DB06AFB3CFAED66BA

[/dev/null]

Interesting, Obama has the Catholic Church behind him and the Democrats on this issue and other Christian Churches are following along. It will take leadership to pass this, but I think Obama will prove himself capable of getting this passed

 

 

http://www.nytimes.c...06AFB3CFAED66BA

 

So...

 

Catholic opposition to forced insurance coverage on birth control = Catholics bad

Catholic support for letting in more Catholics = Catholics good

 

?

[DC Tom]

Interesting, Obama has the Catholic Church behind him and the Democrats on this issue and other Christian Churches are following along. It will take leadership to pass this, but I think Obama will prove himself capable of getting this passed

 

 

http://www.nytimes.c...06AFB3CFAED66BA

 

I think it's more like the Catholic Church and Democrats have Obama behind them.

[Tiberius]

I think it's more like the Catholic Church and Democrats have Obama behind them.

 

Well, you can put the Republican spin on it if you want

[DC Tom]

Well, you can put the Republican spin on it if you want

 

The Catholic Church and Democratic Party have supported immigration reform LONG before Obama was in office.

[B-Man]

 

The Associated Press Notices that Obama Is A Failure

 

In foreign policy, anyway. Funny thing about getting that 2012 election behind us; now that President Obama has been safely re-elected, we are seeing occasional outbursts of honesty about his performance. This AP report by Julie Pace is surprisingly accurate:

Nearly five years into his presidency, Barack Obama confronts a world far different from what he envisioned when he first took office. U.S. influence is declining in the Middle East as violence and instability rock Arab countries. An ambitious attempt to reset U.S. relations with Russia faltered and failed. Even in Obama-friendly Europe, there’s deep skepticism about Washington’s government surveillance programs.

In some cases, the current climate has been driven by factors outside the White House’s control. But missteps by the president also are to blame, say foreign policy analysts, including some who worked for the Obama administration.

 

Among them: miscalculating the fallout from the Arab Spring uprisings, publicly setting unrealistic expectations for improved ties with Russia and a reactive decision-making process that can leave the White House appearing to veer from crisis to crisis without a broader strategy.

 

Obama’s defense, as the AP notes, is that America is a pitiful, helpless giant–something that Richard Nixon was determined to prevent, while Obama apparently regards it as a best-case scenario. Thus have American power and influence declined.

[T]he perception of a president lacking in international influence extends beyond the Arab world, particularly to Russia. Since reassuming the presidency last year, Vladimir Putin has blocked U.S. efforts to seek action against Syria at the United Nations and has balked at Obama’s efforts to seek new agreements on arms control.

 

That Obama is a failure in foreign affairs isn’t news; that a generally liberal source like the Associated Press is willing to acknowledge the fact, is.

Edited August 26, 2013 by B-Man

[Azalin]

The Catholic Church and Democratic Party have supported immigration reform LONG before Obama was in office.

aw, c'mon.....since when are relevant facts required to sustain a good arguement?

[ExiledInIllinois]

That picture is in perfect order from:

 

Eisenhower

Kennedy... I almost didn't recognize him.

Johnson

Nixon

Ford

Carter... Big old Navy anchor is easy to spot.

Reagan

Bush I

 

Then it goes Bush II, Clinton, and then Obama

 

Didn't Clinton come before Bush II? And why is his picture next to Obama's?

 

For effect? Gotta admit... Daddy Bush looks like the real deal... Even if he said to !@#$ and leave his other flyboys behind so he could get plucked outta the Pacific (after being downed).

Edited August 27, 2013 by ExiledInIllinois

[B-Man]

Obama Administration: Its Incompetence Is Historic

 

By Michael Barone,

Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.

 

It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members — a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra.

 

Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He's been talking about dredging the port of Charleston, for example, to accommodate the big container ships coming in when the Panama Canal is widened. The canal widening is proceeding on schedule to be completed in 2014. The target date for dredging the port of Charleston: 2024.

 

Then there's ObamaCare. Barack Obama has already said the administration will not enforce the employer mandate, will not verify eligibility for insurance subsidies and will not require employer-provided policies to cap employees' out-of-pocket costs. The Constitution's requirement that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws apparently does not apply.

 

ObamaCare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health care law — 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy's reading of the Congressional Research Service report.

 

Then there's the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62% of the deadlines in that law.

 

All of which indicates incompetence in drafting or in implementing the legislation — likely both. We have a president who delights in delivering partisan speeches to adoring audiences but doesn't seem interested in whether his administration gets results.

 

But I blame someone else, someone who has been dead these last 68 years. I blame Franklin D. Roosevelt. I blame him for making big government look easy — and politically rewarding. He set an example that most of his successors — Obama is just the latest — have a hard time duplicating.

 

 

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/082613-668794-evidence-of-obama-administration-incompetence-piles-up.htm?p=full

[B-Man]

Obama's Successful Foreign Failure

by Norman Podhoretz

 

It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama´s way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as "incompetent," "bungling," "feckless," "amateurish" and "in over his head" coming from his political opponents on the right.

 

For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world?

 

As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all.

 

Summing up the net effect of all this, as astute a foreign observer as Conrad Black can flatly say that, "Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States."

 

Yet if this is indeed the pass to which Mr. Obama has led us—and I think it is—let me suggest that it signifies not how incompetent and amateurish the president is, but how skillful. His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it.

 

Continues at the link

 

http://online.wsj.co...Opinion_LEADTop

[boyst]

This leader is interrupting my America's Got Howard.

[B-Man]

 

Putin’s gambit, two questions

 

Vladimir Putin’s proposed resolution to the U.S. confrontation with Syria raises the following question: why did Putin propose it?

 

After all, it seemed increasingly clear that Congress was not going to authorize a strike, thus making it more likely than not that Obama would call the whole thing off. Moreover, if conservative critics of the proposed attack are to be believed, any attack would have been so insignificant as to leave Assad essentially unharmed and, indeed, bolstered by virtue of bragging rights.

 

To be sure, Putin’s gambit gives him bragging rights and leaves Obama looking weak. But Obama would look weaker if he had lost a vote in Congress and/or delivered an “unbelievably small” response.

 

To find Putin’s real motive, we should look at the matter geopolitically — which is generally the best way to look at these things.

 

Russia’s overwhelming interest is the protection of Assad’s regime — its only real ally (but stay tuned) in a crucial part of the world, i.e., the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, I believe that Putin proposed his resolution to maximize Assad’s chances of retaining power and winning the civil war.

 

If so, Putin probably believes that a U.S. attack would create a real risk to Assad, enough of a risk to make a settlement worthwhile even as the odds of an attack were decreasing. Putin probably believes (1) that Assad can continue to gain ground in the civil war without relying on chemical weapons (but with some such weapons held secretly in reserve in case his situation falls apart completely), but (2) that a U.S. attack might well reduce Assad’s crucial advantage in the air, disrupt his command-and-control operation, energize the rebels, and so forth.

 

This, I believe, is a sound calculation.

 

The second big question pertains to President Obama’s willingness to accept Putin’s gambit, assuming he does. It’s clear that Obama, sensing defeat of his resolution by Congress, sees the gambit as a way out. My question is: would Obama have accepted Putin’s proposal if it were clear that Congress would have passed his resolution?

 

The answer is unknowable, as Rand Paul might say. But given Obama’s dislike of using military force, it’s quite possible that he would have gone along with Putin’s gambit even if he were operating from a position of political strength. To me, that’s a sad thought.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/09/putins-gambit-two-questions.php

[B-Man]

“If Bush was so bad, then why did Obama lift so much of his speech making the case for military action in Syria from Bush’s speech making the case for military action in Iraq?”

 

Obama’s delivery wasn’t up to Bush’s, though.

 

Because Bush actually believed in what he was saying. . . . . . .