I see Charles Krauthammer concurs with meon the surreal spectacle of a failed President giving advice to the ascendant Governor Scott Walker. Obama had the presumption to advise Walker to “bone up on foreign policy” after the Wisconsin Governor said he would revoke any agreement with Iran as president.
Of course, Dr. K. is somewhat more erudite and civil in his punditry than I am.
“I think this really helps Walker,” Krauthammer declared on Fox News’ Special Report, tonight.
“It’s not just a campaign story. This is a character story. I mean, we all know that Obama is a narcissist. But this is sort of bordering on the pathological. Given the wreckage that he has left America’s foreign policy in across the world, and I could go through the list of countries but it would take up the whole segment from all the way from Mali to what’s happening in Iran and Iraq and Syria right now.
For him to be condescending to anybody on how to conduct foreign policy is quite remarkable. And if he is giving out advice, I think any president, new president would be knowledgeable enough to, for example, this is one of hundreds. You would not want to tell a KGB thug like Putin that after my election I will be a more flexible because Putin, of course, understands all that and he has reacted accordingly.
You have got a president who has left the United States in a position of more weakness, less respect, less trust of our allies, respect of our enemies around the world, compared to six years ago, when he came into office. I think he should be a little more humble when it comes to offering others advice.”
One of the more obnoxious things about Obama’s imperial decree on amnesty is the rationale he’s been using to go forward – which he has repeated over and over again and it didn’t sound any better the 10th time he (or one of his minions) said it.. Congress failed to pass “common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform” when Emperor Obama laid out his glorious principles for reform two years ago — and that’s why he must now act unilaterally.
That’s an obscene distortion of how our system of government works.
“The only rationale Obama is citing in doing this,” Krauthamer explained is “not lack of resources, it’s not a crisis, it’s not something new. As he said the system is broken, it has been for decades. It is one thing and one thing alone. ‘I’ve waited long enough.’ That’s what a caudillo says in a Banana Republic. ‘I waited long enough, and the National Assembly hasn’t acted, and so I’m going to issue a decree.’ That is not how it works in our system.”
Also, George Will throws cold water on liberal equivocations – Executive Amnesty = Institutional Vandalism:
“Just two weeks ago when Speaker Boehner was doing his post-election news conference, he was asked by reporters in that news conference if he would commit to bringing up immigration reform legislation in the next Congress, and he wouldn’t do it,” Josh Earnest said during an appearance on MSNBC.
Earnest said that GOP leadership was scared to allow a vote because “they know, as we do, that if that bill were allowed to come up for a vote it would actually pass in bipartisan fashion.”
“The president simply isn’t going to tolerate that,” Earnest said.
After his party’s historic losses, he refused to even acknowledge the thrashing. Instead, he said the real lesson from that day was that Americans want everyone in Washington to “work together.”
Yet behind the scenes, the president was busy directing his team of lawyers to find real or perceived loopholes in the law — even the Constitution — in order to wave his royal scepter and instantaneously turn as many as 12 million illegal aliens into America citizens. Already he had quietly ordered the federal government to stop deporting aliens and unilaterally allowed some 60,000 “unaccompanied minors” to enter the U.S.
So he never had any intention of “working together” with Republicans, who in six weeks will control both chambers of Congress. Instead, he set off to circumvent Congress by granting amnesty to millions. Throughout, he knew that he would be, as GOP leaders said, “poisoning the well” and “waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the president announced — on Facebook — that he will be delivering a speech Thursday night detailing his intent to change U.S. law by executive fiat. The timing is deliberately designed to throw gasoline on an already blazing fire.
With just weeks to go before the end of the 113th Congress, and with funding for Ebola, a continuing resolution to keep the government open that expires Dec. 11, and a slew of others set to come up, the president has made unilateral action on immigration his top priority.
Despite his vow to work with Republicans, he will shove his executive order down their throats, intent on bringing conflict with the soon-to-be ruling party.
Today is the big day, and the Progressive media is in full spin to mitigate the anger Americans are expressing about President Obama’s decision to offer legal status to millions of people who broke the law. That spin has taken many forms, including the novel arguments that the executive branch is empowered to act whenever the legislative branch declines and that the executive branch’s enforcement discretion includes the affirmative grant of benefits not otherwise authorized by law. Most recently, however, Progressive columnists have settled on an old favorite tactic: justify Democratic misbehavior by claiming (falsely, as you will see) that a Republican did it first.
Democrats across print, web, and cable media have been repeating the claim that Obama is doing nothing more than what Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 did first. They point to executive actions taken in 1987 and 1989 that deferred the removal of certain aliens. But, as usual for Progressive commentators, they elide the crucial facts that distinguish those actions from Obama’s. The sign that you’re being swindled isn’t so much what the con artist tells you, but what he does not tell you. What the Progressive commentariat is not telling you is that the Reagan and Bush immigration orders looked nothing like Obama’s creation of a new, open-ended form of immigration relief.
What is about to happen may be the low point in a presidency filled with them. Mr. Obama is acting in a way that he himself knows–that he himself has said–is unconstitutional and indefensible. No matter. In an act of unmatched narcissism and selfishness, the president will create–he is thirsting to create–a constitutional crisis that is utterly unnecessary and will further polarize our political culture.
Mr. Obama is about to commit an act of constitutional infamy. This is a stain that will stay with him.
On Special Report, Thursday night, Charles Krauthammer weighed in on the question of a travel for persons coming from West Africa.
Dr. K noted the Regime’s tendency to be slow on the uptake – days behind (everyone else) in coming to obvious conclusions.
“We just heard the head of the CDC say that we track all visitors coming in,” he said. “We couldn’t even track a nurse who had treated Mr. Duncan all the way to Cleveland. And we’re going to be assured that a Ghanaian coming in here, is going to be tracked for the three weeks? And if you check his temperature and it’s negative – there’s still three weeks in which he can develop symptoms and we’re actually going to know where he is – who he talked to – and if he gets sick, we’re going to have to retrace people he’s been in contact with…This is absurd. We get a couple more cases of people who come in with Ebola – like Mr. Duncan, and I absolutely assure you we’re going to have a travel ban.”
The feud pertains to McCain’s visit to Syria and support for the “moderate” Syrian rebels. Was he or was he not photographed with jihadists? Rand Paul believes he was. So do conservative reporters Matthew Boyle and Charles C. Johnson and the Lebanese Daily Star. Certain MSM “fact-checkers like the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler say it’s bunk. As does John McCain obviously.
McCain Dismisses Rand Paul on Hannity: ‘Has He Ever Been to Syria?
Sen. Rand Paul Appears on Fox’s Hannity – September 17, 2014:
Bill O’Reilly John McCain on Rand Paul Feud & Arming Syrian Rebels:
Bill O’Reilly talked with John McCain on feud with Rand Paul. john mccain bill o’reilly also discussed isis, arming syrian rebels and the situation in ukraine.
The criticism of McCain centers around how the Arizona senator met with Syrian rebel leaders in May 2013 when he visited the country. McCain posed for photographs with those people, and since then rumors have sprouted up across the Internet that he met with ISIS or some other terrorist kidnappers or nefarious forces.
“The people in the pictures with Senator McCain in Syria included General Salim Idris, then-Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Command of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Mouaz Moustafa, the Executive Director of the DC-based Syrian Emergency Task Force (which supports the moderate opposition and helped arrange some of the trip), and fighters and commanders from the Northern Storm Brigade, a FSA-aligned group,” McCain’s spokesman Brian Rogers told Breitbart News.
Rogers said that the senator and his team aren’t naming the “fighters and commanders from the Northern Storm Brigade, a FSA-aligned group,” because “ISIS actually threatened to kill them all, and we don’t want to put their lives at risk.” Rogers provided Breitbart News with a link to the ISIS threat to those fighters.
O’Bagy wasn’t troubled by McCain’s desire to spend the night with a group formerly run by kidnappers. In the Beirut Daily Star, a former hostage held by the anti-regime Northern Storm Brigade identified one of the men in a photo with McCain as Mohammad Nour, the chief spokesman and photographer for the Northern Storm kidnappers. The former hostage told the paper he had seen Nour several times and been photographed by him during his captivity.
He’s launched airstrikes and is threatening ground troops but IT’S NOT WAR. He took a victory lap for Osama bin Laden but opposed the means that got his location. He’s broken every Progressive policy and gospel on the books, and he’s doing the same things for the same reasons his predecessor did, only he’s doing them late, doing them badly and blaming everyone else. In his latest Firewall Bill Whittle shows why Barack Obama is nothing more than Bush Lite.
NRO: Krauthammer’s Take: Obama’s Decision to Personally Approve Air Strikes Is ‘Scary Stuff’:
Megyn Kelly to Bill Ayers: Yes, My Eyes Are ‘Cold’ When I’m Staring at a ‘Serial Bomber’
PJ Media, Trifecta: Great Unraveling: Can the Threads of the American Tapestry Be Rewoven?
How will Terri Lynn Land put Michigan first?
By demanding trade deals that give Michigan industry a fair playing field to create jobs.
By securing our borders, to protect Michigan jobs.
And by keeping Michigan families’ tax dollars in Michigan to improve roads and infrastructure…
…instead of having them wasted in Washington.
Turn the page on the Washington politics and hypocrisy… with Terri Lynn Land’s plan to put Michigan first.
MO Torch: Ed Martin Says Turk Can Beat Cleaver Because 2014 is “Like 2010, But Better”
Ed Martin lays out why he supports Jacob Turk in Missouri’s 5th Congressional District.
Yesterday Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer said on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that he is “not confident” that Obama will do anything to counter the threat from the savage Islamic State militant group in Syria.
The Obama administration is currently considering expanding its air strike campaign from northern Iraq into Syria to fight the militants. Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and a Fox News contributor, said he thinks it is possible that the administration may choose to do nothing.
“I’m not confident that he’ll do anything,” he said. “I’m not confident that he can come up with a strategy.”
In his press conference, Thursday. which some are calling his weakest presser to date – Obama did nothing to disabuse his critics of the notion that he’s not interested in taking any decisive action to stop ISIS. He confused one and all by talking about his strategy of pushing for a political resolution of the Sunnis’ complaints about the Shiite government, and recruiting the help of surrounding nations (instead of doing things “unilaterally” like you know who.) Then he
The President also made clear that dealing with ISIS in Syria was probably on the agenda though the strategy for accomplishing all of that…well, we don’t have one yet:
in order for us to degrade ISIL over the long term, we’re going to have to build a regional strategy…
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet.I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are. And I think that’s not just my assessment, but the assessment of our military, as well. We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress and make sure that their voices are heard.But there’s no point in me asking for action on the part of Congress before I know exactly what it is that is going to be required for us to get the job done.
Press Secretary Josh Earnest – who has a better grasp of the talking points, has been saying that Obama has a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with ISIS.
He was on clean-up duty on Twitterwithin an hour of Obama’s presser — to insist that the president certainly does have a “comprehensive strategy.”
In his remarks today, POTUS was explicit – as he has been in the past – about the comprehensive strategy we’ll use to confront ISIL threat.
Obama has a comprehensive strategy to push a media narrative that he has a comprehensive strategy – which in reality only talks about comprehensive strategies.
Via NRO, Charles Krauthammer reacted to Obama’s fail-whale of a presser on Special Report, Thursday evening.
“Look I thought that the president could no longer surprise me,” Krauthammer said. “I was wrong. He shocked me today. The President of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American, deliberately sort of spitting in the face of the country and demonstrating his cruelty, the president gets in front of the world and says, “I don’t have a strategy.” If that is true, don’t say anything. Why do you announce that you don’t have a strategy?”
But even worse than the president’s statement that he had no strategy to defeat the Islamic State, Krauthammer said, was his comment about Ukraine. Krauthammer summarized Obama’s comment on his strategy in Ukraine by saying Obama acknowledged that he had a strategy in Ukraine, which was “to do absolutely nothing.”
Charles Krauthammer on Monday put all the blame for the chronic dithering and indecision of the Obama Regime on one person – Obama himself.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier”, he said that the Regime’s conflicting statements about the threat from the Islamic State militant group shows that “the president simply can’t decide” what to do.
Last week, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said ISIS was an imminent threat, but Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said Monday that the group was not a direct threat to the U.S.
Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and a Fox News contributor, questioned that discrepancy.
He said, “it’s obvious what the United States has to do about ISIS. You have to do a coordinated air campaign in conjunction with troops on the ground who are Kurds, Iraqis and the Free Syrian Army. That is a very complicated operation, and you wonder – despite the fact that that’s what we need to do to stop ISIS, whether this administration, that can’t even get its story straight in one day, can conduct an operation of that delicacy and complexity, military, diplomatic and political, ” he said. “The president simply can’t decide. I think this really ought to make us think twice about whether we can entrust a man of this lack of decisiveness who clearly does not want to do this.”
He added one devastating last point: “that’s the feeling I had when he made the announcement in 2009 at West Point about Afghanistan (after much dithering if you remember.) It was the right idea – but the wrong man doing it – somebody who clearly never had his heart in it, and now after all the dead and all the losses , we’re ending up leaving as if nothing had happened except for American dead.”
“Ralph, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not supposed to be messing with the information in order to assuage political concerns,” Kelly said. “So what do you believe is the likelihood that somebody took Gen. Dempsey out behind the woodshed over the weekend and said, ‘What are you saying the threat is imminent for?’”
Peters responded that they definitely took him out to “the woodshed.”
“Gen. Dempsey committed the greatest sin you can commit in the Obama administration last week – he told the truth,” Peters said, explaining that Dempsey told the public that ISIS is a growing threat to the U.S., there’s no real border between Syria and Iraq, and ISIS can’t be defeated without going into Syria.
Dempsey’s previous remarks didn’t fit with the administration’s “JV” narrative, Peters said. Now, “with a wave of the president’s magic golf club,” Peters said that the narrative has changed back.
Kelly asked Peters: Is Obama disengaged or disillusioned?
“I think he’s sulking. I mean he’s just not gonna clean his room, and you can’t make him clean up his room. He’s like a child, and it’s really alarming because he needs to get out of his snit and do something,” Peters said.
Nice Deb 