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Barack Obama Tag

Posted by Amy Miller on September 11, 2014 17 Comments
Barack Obama's address to the nation regarding the threat of ISIS was met with both cautious optimism and unbridled mockery from pundits on both sides of the aisle. No one was more optimistic than CNN's latest hire, former Obama Administration press secretary Jay Carney. Unfortunately for Carney, however, CNN had also invited Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was more than a little irritated at the media's willingness to overlook the fact that Obama chose to ignore the possibility of the current crisis when he decided to pull the occupying force out of Iraq.
Facts are stubborn things, Mr. Carney. His entire national security team, including his Secretary of State, said we want to arm and train and equip these people and he made the unilateral decision to turn them down. And the fact he didn’t leave a residual force in Iraq, overruling all of his military advisers, is the reason we’re facing ISIS today. So the facts are stubborn things in history, and people ought to know them. And now the president is saying basically that we are going to take certain actions, which I would favor. But to say that America is safer, and that the situation is very much like Yemen and Somalia shows me that the President really doesn’t have a grasp for how serious the threat of ISIS is.
Carney eventually managed to respond, in true Carney fashion:
It is a mis – basically a whitewash of history to suggest that there weren’t periods of enormous chaos and fighting and bloodshed in Iraq when there were tens of thousands of Americans troops on the ground. That is a fact. And that was true in 2004, it was true in 2007. And it was true even when we had the highest number of U.S. troops on the ground. We cannot – the United States of America – ask our military to be a permanent occupying force in a country like Iraq.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 10, 2014 47 Comments
You can watch the full address here. President Obama addressed the nation tonight in response to growing concerns regarding the ability of the Islamic State ("ISIS") to threaten American interests. President Obama came out of the gate on defense: Then attempted to draw a difference between the Islamic State and...Islam?

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 07, 2014 17 Comments
Today was Chuck Todd's first day hosting Meet the Press and he scored a sit down with Obama. When asked about his decision to play golf right after his statement on James Foley, Obama suggested he didn't anticipate the optics. Carrie Dan of NBC News reported:
Not A Natural? Obama Says Political Theater Not His Strength President Barack Obama, once mocked by his political opponents as “the biggest celebrity in the world,” told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the theater of the presidency is “not something that always comes naturally to me.” Pressed by Todd about his decision to play golf shortly after a Martha’s Vineyard press conference addressing the beheading of journalist James Foley, Obama said he “should have anticipated the optics” of hitting the links. “Part of this job is also the theater of it,” he said in the exclusive interview for NBC’s Meet the Press. “Well, it's not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters. And I'm mindful of that.”
The president's words are inspiring mockery on Twitter.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 04, 2014 11 Comments
Rasmussen released a poll this week revealing that only 25% of likely voters believe that America is heading in the right direction. Just one year ago, this viewpoint was expressed by 30% of likely voters. Via Rasmussen:
This is up two points from the week before which tied the lowest level of confidence since last October during the temporary government shutdown. The number who say the country is heading in the right direction has been below 30% for most of this year. Early last October during the shutdown, confidence in the country’s course fell to 13%, the lowest finding in five years. Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters now think the country is headed down the wrong track. This finding is down three points from 69% a week ago, the highest negative finding since last November. Eighty percent (80%) felt the country was on the wrong track in early October 2013.
Notably, 70% of likely voters not affiliated with either the Republican or Democratic Party believe that the country is on the wrong track---which exceeds the average by 4 points. This latest poll comes at a time when President Obama's approval rating is hovering above his all-time low of 38%. With just 41% of Americans willing to admit they approve of the way the President is doing his job (down 2 points since August 24,) Republicans are finding themselves with a key strategic advantage as we move into the last 60 days before the November elections. gallup approval sept 3

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 02, 2014 7 Comments
It's amazing what you can miss if you don't attend fundraisers for the Democratic Party. Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard tells a fascinating story about Obama at such an event in Rhode Island this weekend:
Obama: Bush-Cheney 'Security Apparatus' Makes Us 'Pretty Safe' President Barack Obama said last night at a Democratic fundraiser in Rhode Island that the terrorism from ISIS "doesn’t immediately threaten the homeland." The reason? The security measures taken by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Obama. First the president said the situation in the Middle East is "scary," according to a transcript of the event released by the White House. "I don’t have to tell you, anybody who has been watching TV this summer, it seems like it is just wave after wave ofupheaval, most of it surrounding the Middle East. You’re seeing a change in the order in the Middle East. But the old order is having a tough time holding together and the new order has yet to be born, and in the interim, it’s scary."

Posted by Amy Miller on September 01, 2014 10 Comments
It seems like even the most staunch democrats are waking up to the realities of Obama's America---especially the political realities. Republicans need to capture 5 of the 6 most competitive Senate seats in the 2014 midterms to regain control of the chamber and end Majority Leader Harry Reid's reign of terror against Republican legislation. This means unseating at least three incumbent Democrats in states that Mitt Romney swept in 2012, and national democrats are nervous at the prospect. Why? Because Barack Obama is a toxic commodity. Via Politico:
Six years ago, Obama’s massive campaign organization helped to sweep several Senate Democrats, now the most endangered, into office with his appeal to unite political factions. Now, he’s an attack line. Across the country, from Alaska and Colorado, to Louisiana and North Carolina, Republicans are citing how often the Democratic incumbent sided with the White House on votes in Congress. It’s a tactic Democrats used to great effect in 2006 when they wrestled back control of the Senate by linking every incumbent to President George W. Bush, who was even more unpopular than Obama. “He’s going to be an anchor on each one of these Democrats all the way through,” said Guy Harrison, a media consultant for the Republican Senate nominees in Arkansas, Colorado and North Carolina. “They’re trying to grasp every life preserver they can, but the anchor of Obama is still going to pull them down.”

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 23 Comments
A new editorial from the Washington Post takes an unusually sober look at President Obama's foreign policy chops and his non-reaction to the world that's burning around him:
President Obama needs to focus on how the United States can meet global challenges PRESIDENT OBAMA’S acknowledgment that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria understandably attracted the most attention after his perplexing meeting with reporters Thursday. But his restatement of the obvious was not the most dismaying aspect of his remarks. The president’s goal, to the extent he had one, seemed to be to tamp down all the assessments of gathering dangers that his own team had been issuing over the previous days. This argument with his own administration is alarming on three levels. The first has to do with simple competence. One can only imagine the whiplash that foreign leaders must be suffering. They heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power denounce Russia as “today . . . they open a new front . . . Russia’s force along the border is the largest it has been . . . the mask is coming off.” An hour later, Mr. Obama implicitly contradicted her: “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now . . . it’s not really a shift.”
If you read on from there, you'll notice that the editors use the word "disturbing" twice to describe Obama's response to the situation in Ukraine and the rise of ISIS. This is quite a departure from the Post's endorsement of Obama in 2012.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 30, 2014 10 Comments
In case you missed it, I went off on a bit of a rant about comedy in the age of Obama at my site American Glob this week. Frankly, I'm sick to death of the left's inability to find anything funny about Obama while continuing to target the same tired subjects of Bush, FOX News and Republicans in general. Jon Stewart is a classic example of this and the left loves to point out how Stewart "destroys" his subjects. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon points out that Stewart can often induce laughter from his audience by simply staring at them after showcasing his chosen target, who is almost always someone on the right:
Comedy of Stares You know the drill if you watch The Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart plays a smashcut of television news clips, to help him destroy, eviscerate, demolish, devastate, torch, obliterate and disembowel a generally conservative straw man opinion, movement or Fox News host.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on August 14, 2014 13 Comments
In what has become a nearly daily occurrence, President Obama summoned the media to discuss the situation in Iraq (and Ferguson, Missouri) from his vacation spot in Martha's Vineyard. The President seemed to take a victory lap on United States' efforts to stabilize the Yazidi refugee crisis in Northern Iraq.
President Obama announced Thursday that U.S.-led airstrikes have broken the siege by Islamic militants against religious minorities who were trapped on a mountain in northern Iraq -- but made clear the U.S. mission in the region is not over yet. The president, in brief remarks from Martha's Vineyard where his family is on vacation, said he expects the specific operation at Mount Sinjar to wind down. He said military planners will be leaving in the coming days, aid drops will stop and a U.S.-led evacuation is likely no longer needed. "The situation on the mountain has greatly improved," Obama said. "We broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar. We helped vulnerable people reach safety." But Obama said U.S. involvement will not come to an end, as militants with the Islamic State -- also known as ISIS, or ISIL -- continue to brutalize the civilian population in the region, especially minorities like Iraqi Christians and Yazidis. Obama said "we will continue airstrikes" where necessary to protect American personnel and facilities in Iraq.

Posted by Mike LaChance on August 10, 2014 17 Comments
If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, will she pull an Obama, and blame everything on her predecessor, the way Obama still blames Bush for everything? Even if it's a President from her own party?  And an administration she participated in? And a Foreign Policy she helped develop? From recent interviews, looks like Hillary has found her George Bush, and it's Obama. A new report from FOX News seems to indicate that when it comes to foreign policy, she she'll be running against Obama's legacy:
Clinton critical of Obama foreign policy, says 'failure' to act in Syria created vacuum for jihad Hillary Clinton, the front-runner among potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates, is sharply distancing herself from President Obama's foreign policy, particularly in Syria, as Americans appear to continue losing confidence in his handling of key international affairs. Clinton, who as secretary of state was Obama’s top diplomat, suggested during an in-depth interview with The Atlantic magazine that the president’s foreign-policy mantra of “don’t do stupid stuff” lacked sufficient depth. “Great nations need organizing principles,” she said in the roughly 8,000-word interview released Sunday. “And ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” The interview comes as Americans’ opinion of how Obama is handling crises in Israel, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, continues to sink. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released Tuesday, three days before Obama ordered airstrikes and humanitarian airdrops in Syria, showed a record-high disapproval rating. Sixty percent of those polled disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy efforts, compared to 36 percent who approved. The interview also could help or hurt the former first lady’s effort to burnish her own foreign policy credentials ahead of an official 2016 campaign.
The significance of Hillary's position wasn't lost on Maggie Haberman of Politico:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 28, 2014 34 Comments
CNN released a poll over the weekend that showed if the 2012 election were held today, Mitt Romney would beat Barack Obama... easily.
According to the poll, if the 2012 election were somehow held again, Romney would capture 53% of the popular vote, with the President at 44%. Obama beat Romney 51%-47% in the popular vote in the 2012 contest. And he won the all-important Electoral College by a wider margin, 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. Last November, an ABC News/Washington Post survey indicated that if the 2012 election were held again, Romney would have had a 49%-45% edge over Obama in the popular vote.
The usual suspects on the left -- like Oliver Willis at Media Matters -- were out in full force blaming Obama's current unpopularity on CNN itself or a space-time continuum breach of some sort. But as Jay Caruso points out, the answer is pretty simple -- buyer's remorse. Obama just isn't popular anymore. Most Americans still believe the economy stinks and think it is getting worse...
Currently, one in five Americans (20%) say the economy is excellent or good, while 33% say it is poor, resulting in a current conditions index of -13. As for the economy's future, 38% say the economy is getting better, while 56% say it is getting worse, for an economic outlook score of -18 -- the same as the previous week's score.
...and the world seems to be in turmoil not seen in a generation. NBC News' Chuck Todd seems to sum up Obama's dilemma quite well: America is fatigued.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 15, 2014 7 Comments
One of the most vocal critics of President Barack Obama's lackluster response to the exploding southern border crisis is one of the few Southern Democrats left in Congress: U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). Cuellar was among the only lawmaker in his party to smack down the President last week during the "will he or won't he visit the border" phase of the crisis. From Politico last week:
“He’ll be 500 miles from Dallas and, in fact, he’ll be 242 miles from Austin, Texas, at the other fundraising he’ll be having,” Cuellar told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBCS, referring to Obama’s destinations during his two-day trip to Texas beginning Wednesday. “So, he’s so close to the border. And let me say this. When I saw — and I hate to use the word ‘bizarre,’ but under the circumstances — when he is shown playing pool in Colorado, drinking a beer, and he can’t even go 242 miles to the Texas border?” “If he had time, with all due respect, to have a beer and play pool like he did in Colorado last night, then I think after the fundraisers he should make time to go down there,” he said.
Here's how The White House treated Cuellar's criticism. They told him to shut up. But Cuellar isn't backing down.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 12, 2014 6 Comments
This week Obama spoke to a crowd in Austin, Texas. He was in the state for fundraisers and never visited the border. That didn't stop him from complaining about congress and Republicans in particular. Obama said he's doing all the work. The Washington Free Beacon reported:
Obama: It’s Lonely Doing All The Work “You know it is lonely, me just doing stuff. I’d love it if the Republicans did stuff too,” he said during his speech in Austin, Texas. “Sometimes I feel like saying to these guys: ‘I’m the guy doing my job. You must be the other guy’,” Obama remarked, quoting Mark Wahlberg’s character in “a great movie called ‘The Departed.’
They say James Brown was the hardest working man in show business. I'm not so sure. Obama loves to claim that he'll listen to people's ideas and work together. What he always fails to mention is that Republicans offer bills and ideas all the time. He just doesn't like them. Has Obama really given up on his job as some have suggested or is he just trolling his critics at this point?

Posted by Amy Miller on July 12, 2014 11 Comments
The President would like you to know that your demands for him to lay eyes upon the wasteland of human degradation that is our southern border are nothing more than a blow to the dignity of the Office. This week, President Obama fielded a considerable amount of angst over his neglect of the U.S.-Mexico border. The President failed to go anywhere near the border during his recent fundraising trip to Texas, and when asked by the press why he was avoiding the area, he responded in kind:
Jeh Johnson has now visited, at my direction, the border five times. He’s going for a sixth this week. He then comes back and reports to me extensively on everything that's taking place. So there’s nothing that is taking place down there that I am not intimately aware of and briefed on. This isn’t theater. This is a problem. I’m not interested in photo-ops; I’m interested in solving a problem. And those who say I should visit the border, when you ask them what should we be doing, they're giving us suggestions that are embodied in legislation that I’ve already sent to Congress. So it’s not as if they're making suggestions that we’re not listening to. In fact, the suggestions of those who work at the border, who visited the border, are incorporated in legislation that we’re already prepared to sign the minute it hits my desk.
No one in the history of the meme has ever asked for it with a more aggressive lack of self-awareness. Via Digitas Daily: This, coming from the man who once snapped a selfie at a humanitarian's funeral. No, wait, it's worse. This, coming from the man WHO WAS MOCKED BY THE SUN for taking a selfie at a humanitarian's funeral:
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