Image 01 Image 03

Barack Obama Tag

Two ongoing news stories that broke this past week show the Obama administration's contrasting styles towards America's top Middle East ally and a rogue nation that continues to flout international law. Obama and his top officials have no problem playing hardball with Israel, but become like Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story, who doesn't like confrontations, when dealing with  Iran. First, last Tuesday The Wall Street Journal (Google link) reported that the administration excluded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the list of foreign leaders it would not spy on after Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA regularly spied on friendly heads of state. Quoting current and former U.S. officials the spying on Netanyahu was deemed by Obama to be a “compelling national security purpose.” Of course the reason for this was Netanyahu's objections to the Iran nuclear deal. The fear was that Netanyahu would leak sensitive information he had been told by the United States in order to torpedo the deal. (Israel insisted that the secret details that it learned came from spying on Iran.)

Now that the holidays are over it's back to business as usual. In Obama's case that means pushing a pet issue with no authorization from congress. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Obama Ready to Act Alone on Gun Control President Barack Obama, who has bypassed a reluctant Congress on issues ranging from immigration to climate change, is preparing to take executive action on gun control, including expanding background checks on buyers. But even as he gets set to act, Mr. Obama has only limited levers he can pull without Congress, and any unilateral action will face hurdles similar to those it has encountered during earlier attempts to tighten access to guns.

A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails was released last night on New Year's Eve. One particularly entertaining exchange revealed that the progressive billionaire George Soros had some regrets over the 2008 election. Kristina Wong reports at The Hill:
Clinton emails: Billionaire Soros said he regretted backing Obama George Soros, a billionaire Democratic donor, told a close Hillary Clinton ally that he regretted supporting President Obama over her in the 2008 Democratic primary, according to an email released Thursday by the State Department. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden said in a May 2012 email to Clinton that Soros made the admission to her during a dinner. "I told him I worked for you in the primaries and he said he's been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn't met with the President ever (though I thought he had)," Tanden wrote.

If you ask me what the most important article in The New York Times of the past week, it would not be the front page editorial advocating stricter gun control. That editorial was important in terms of the mindset of the Times, but had little real new value. The most significant new article in The New York Times during this past week was Friday's analysis of the nuclear deal with Iran. The article is a devastating indictment of the administration and its zeal to reach a nuclear deal with Iran at all costs. To be sure the reporter, David Sanger, an excellent journalist, presented the administration's positions respectfully. But there's no getting around that however President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry justify their capitulations, they are willing to lift sanctions on Iran without requiring Iran to come clean about its past illicit nuclear research. In the wake of last week's IAEA report about Iran's past nuclear research, the administration is reportedly satisfied that Iran has provided the IAEA with enough information to close the investigation into Iran's past nuclear work and move ahead to the implementation of this summer's nuclear deal. The administration's rationale is that "preventing a nuclear-armed Iran in the future is far more important than trying to force it to admit" its past illicit nuclear research.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul feels the nation is less safe today than ever before in recent memory. His concerns were validated by the most recent vapid statements from our Commander-in-Chief.  Speaking alongside French President François Hollande at a joint news conference, President Obama stated that next week’s climate change summit in Paris would be a “powerful rebuke” to terrorists.
“Next week, I will be joining President Hollande and world leaders in Paris for the global climate conference,” Obama said during his prepared remarks, which focused mostly on the efforts to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children,” he added.

California senator Dianne Feinstein has been one of the few Democrats willing to voice concern over the Obama administration's handling of ISIS. Yesterday on Face the Nation, she continued to express doubt. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon:
Feinstein: Obama Approach to Islamic State Not ‘Sufficient to the Job’ Face The Nation host John Dickerson asked whether her earlier concerns about the administration’s strategy had been alleviated by a briefing from Secretary of State John Kerry. “No, I don’t think the approach is sufficient to the job,“ Feinstein said on Face The Nation. “I think their general principles and their general principles in terms of the administration’s strategy, too, but I’m concerned that we don’t have the time, and we don’t have years. We need to be aggressive now, because ISIL is a quasi-state.”

President Obama's approval ratings may be circling the drain, but a new Gallup poll released today shows that they're slightly less terrible than usual. Small miracles? American approval of Obama's handling of health care and the economy just clocked in at 44%, which represents a three-year high in both categories. The last time Obama did this well in the polls, he had just been elected to his second term; back then, an anemic 44% still represented a significant boost over the President's first term numbers. Gallup explains the trend:
Americans have not been as approving of Obama's performance on the economy since November 2012, just after the president was re-elected to a second term. The 44% he received then was similar to the 45% right before Election Day. Both scores were major improvements from the sub-40% ratings he'd received during much of his first term -- including a record low of 26% in August 2011 after contentious negotiations with Congress to raise the debt limit. Obama's best marks on the economy -- between 55% and 59% -- came during his first few months in office. Over the past three years, Obama's economic approval rating has fluctuated, reaching a low of 33% in 2014.

Speaking from the G20 Summit in Turkey Monday morning, President Obama addressed the terrorist attacks that shook Paris late Friday night. "Much of our attention has focused on the heinous attacks that took place in Paris... We're working closely with out French partners as they pursue their investigations and track down suspects. France is already a strong counter-terrorism partner and today we're announcing a new agreement. We're streamlining the process which we share operational and military intelligence with France," said President Obama. Has the President changed his tune on ISIS, at least when it comes to the type of threat the wannabe caliphate poses? The reader may remember the oft-tossed around reference the president once made about ISIS, calling them a "JV" team. Last year, during an interview with New Yorker Magazine, President Obama said of al Qaeda groups, "the analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee teams puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant."

The Democratic Party is in big trouble and people are starting to notice. The last two mid term elections have flipped control to Republicans on a massive scale and the Democrats have no back bench. Just look at their leading candidates for president. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders aren't up and comers, they're senior citizens and there are no Marco Rubios waiting in the wings. Ashe Schow writes at the Observer:
Obama Has Decimated His Own Party Unlike Any Other Modern President Last week concluded the final election of President Obama’s tenure that didn’t involve replacing him. After seven years in office and as many elections, the Democratic Party has taken a beating worse than the Republican Party took under George W. Bush.

Today Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Obama at the White House to discuss ISIS, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, and the continuing scandal that is the Iran nuclear deal. It was the first time the two men have met face to face in over a year, and the first time they have spoken since the passage of the Iran deal. During a private session with the press, Obama emphasized that both leaders are looking for "common ground," and condemned the latest wave of Palestinian violence perpetuated against Israelis; he backed the right of Israelis to defend themselves, but pushed Netanyahu for ideas on how to relieve the tension. Netanyahu continued his public support for a two-state solution, but insisted that a solution would only come when the Palestinians relent and recognize Israel as a Jewish state---which the Palestinians continue to reject. You can see the press briefing here:

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd outlined the huge losses the Democratic Party has suffered under Obama's tenure. He even spoke to a Politico reporter who called the Obama machine a lie. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon:
Meet The Press host Chuck Todd and his Sunday panelists outlined the Democratic Party’s heavy losses under the Obama administration, with panelist Marc Caputo saying the idea of the “Obama political machine” was a “lie” that couldn’t win without him on a ballot. Under Obama, Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats and 69 House seats in Congress, and the results are even more staggering on a local level. Democrats have lost 12 governorships, including Kentucky last week with the election of Matt Bevin, 30 state legislative chambers and more than 900 state legislative seats. That’s the worst showing for an incumbent president’s party since the Richard Nixon years, due to the taint of Watergate...

Obama has been trying to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay since being sworn in as president and now he's running out of time. Would it be surprising for him to just go around congress? The Wall Street Journal reports:
Obama’s Gitmo Workaround President Obama is about to send Congress a doomed plan to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, so he can then shut down Gitmo the way he does nearly anything—by executive order. White House press secretary Josh Earnest repeated the familiar drill Wednesday. They “work with Congress where we can,” Mr. Earnest said. “But if Congress continues to refuse, I wouldn’t rule out the President using every element of his authority to make progress.”

Earlier this week, the State Department rejected an industry request that they pause their review of the Keystone XL pipeline until the conclusion of negotiations between Nebraska policymakers and TransCanada officials. State rejected this request, and today, President Obama officially rejected TransCanada's request to build the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama's approval was required for the project's completion, as construction would cross an international border. More from the WSJ:
“The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL Pipeline would not serve the national interest of the U.S.,” President Barack Obama said in brief remarks from the White House. “I agree with that decision.”

Obama likes to mock the opposition:
"Have you noticed that everyone of these candidates say, 'Obama's weak. Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's going to straighten out,'" Obama said, impersonating a refrain among Republican candidates that he's allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin too much leeway. "Then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at the debate. Let me tell you, if you can't handle those guys, then I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you," Obama said.
Of course, Obama has never had to handle anything even remotely like the questions at that CNBC debate, since the MSM is respectful to him to the point of obsequiousness, and debate moderators have gone so far as to carry his water when he seems about to falter. In 2007, he and Hillary Clinton boycotted a debate that had been scheduled to be co-hosted by Fox News; the other co-host was the Congressional Black Caucus, but apparently even that hosting balancing act wasn't quite friendly enough.

President Obama may have abandoned trusted allies and diminished US influence across the globe, leaving behind an inviting vacuum for tyrants and terrorists alike, but he is picking the right fights, and winning them too---at least the ones progressive liberals care about. That’s what Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants us to believe. Michael Bloomberg, who now carries the pompous title of United Nation's Special Envoy for ‘Climate Change’ wrote a triumphant editorial for CNN titled “We’re winning the war against coal.” He praised President Obama’s glorious record in the ‘War on Coal’, in which he forced 130 coal power plants out of business in the last 5 years and made it so an additional 70 plants will have to follow suit. According to Michael Bloomberg, the U.S. is well on its way to “phasing-out coal” as a source of energy. Former New York Mayor writes:
Here's some good news that many Americans may not realize: Domestically, we are winning the fight against the carbon pollution that drives climate change. And by doing so, we are giving President Obama a strong hand to play when world leaders gather at the U.N.'s climate summit in Paris in five weeks to negotiate a global agreement to limit carbon emissions.

At a White House forum on criminal justice reform Thursday, President Obama offered an unsolicited defense of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Janell Ross of the Washington Post:
President Obama defended ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But why did he have to? Obama chose to weigh in on the simmering controversy over the phrase "Black Lives Matter." More specifically, he gave his take on the idea that the phrase is a threat, a verbal affront or some kind of intentional effort to devalue the lives of others. This idea seems to have started with a few not-exactly disinterested police union heads and law enforcement officials, boiled over on a number of conservative blogs and has reverberated with a certain share of the white American public...

Last Sunday, we published a post showing how Obama pretty much signaled Justice to lay off their investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server. During an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, the President threw the FBI's investigation under the bus when he said---without going into much detail---that he didn't think the server posed a national security threat.
Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem?