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Barack Obama Tag

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:

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 07, 2014 3 Comments
Tracy Oppenheimer of Reason TV recently interviewed Frank Buckley, an author and law professor at George Mason University. Buckley contends that the power of the presidency has strayed from what the framers intended:
Presidential Power and the Rise of American Monarchy: Q&A with Author Frank Buckley "America is dropping like a stone in rankings of freedom. As power accumulates in one person, expect that to continue," says Frank Buckley, George Mason University law professor and author of the new book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. Buckley sat down with Reason TV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss how the U.S. presidency has evolved into what he calls "something like an elective monarch." He says that this is not what the framers of the Constitution had intended, nor did they conceive of the modern version of the separation of powers. "A parliamentary regime was more or less what the framers wanted...as far as the separation of powers is concerned," says Buckley "instead of a device to constrain a president, it's one which immunizes him from criticism by Congress."
Here's the video: With all that in mind, John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist has a recommendation for you and your family this holiday weekend.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 28, 2014 10 Comments
Obama made a public appearance in Minnesota on Friday which Neil Munro of the Daily Caller has described as a pity party:
President Barack Obama’s June 27 effort to boost the flagging morale of his supporters quickly devolved into a demoralizing pity party. Republicans “don’t do anything except block me and call me names,” he told supporters, only a few days after it was revealed that his economy shrank 2.9 percent in the first three months of 2014. “If we make some basic changes, we can create more jobs and lift more incomes and strengthen the middle class… I know it drives you nuts that Washington isn’t doing it,” he said. “It drives me nuts.”
The president also went back to dismissing the many scandals engulfing his presidency as phony. Susan Jones of CNS News:
President Obama warned people in Minnesota Friday not to believe what they hear on television: "They're fabricated issues, they're phony scandals that are generated. It's all geared towards the next election or ginning up a base. It's not on the level," the president insisted.
Here's the video: CNS News provided the full transcript of Obama's remarks:

Posted by Amy Miller on June 24, 2014 27 Comments
The White House is taking to Twitter in its appeal for an increase in the federal minimum wage. On Monday, the @WhiteHouse Twitter account posted a graphic touting their "#RaiseTheWage" campaign:

White-house-tweet-america-raise

Unfortunately, the proposed minimum wage raise could come at enormous cost.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 22, 2014 9 Comments
Friday night, Ben Shapiro of Truth Revolt appeared on Megyn Kelly's FOX News program to discuss Lois Lerner's missing emails. Trey Sanchez writes at Truth Revolt:
Host Megyn Kelly began by discussing the IRS investigation into the lost emails of ex-IRS official Lois Lerner. Initially, Kelly stated, Democrats and Republicans were both equally outraged. But as time has gone by, Democrats have lost their outrage, reinforced by President Obama, who insists not one smidgen of corruption is involved. Kelly said it was like IRS employees were saying, "Whoops! We're sorry, we lost basically all of the evidence you need to prove your case against me."
Shapiro explained the role the media plays in the parade of Obama scandals:
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