The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom
and individual liberty
"There
is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it
steadily." --George
Washington
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Spies Like Us -Obama
New revelations about the extent of the NSA's
surveillance program aren't exactly shocking -- now that we know they spy on everyone,
the "how" is just details. It came to light that the NSA can crack
pretty much all standard encryption -- bank systems, medical records, emails, chats
and phone calls are all readily available. The NSA can easily hack Smartphone's, as well, revealing data usage and
even location information on where
the user was. To some extent, such code cracking is their job
description, but according to The New York Times, "Beginning in 2000, as
encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested
billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to
eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own 'back
door' in all encryption, it set out to accomplish the same goal by
stealth." Forcing tech companies to cooperate is also part of the ball game.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports,
"The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011
to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted
phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for
Americans' communications in its massive databases." Barack Obama
told Jay Leno last month, "We don't have a domestic spying program."
But the truth is, Obama has expanded the NSA's enormous apparatus, which is
being used to spy on everyone -- including American citizens with no ties
whatsoever to terrorism -- and the agency is pulling in far more
comprehensive data than at first thought. The ramifications for privacy and
Liberty are numerous and extremely unsettling.
~~~~~~
Before Barack Obama Talks About Dead Children on Tuesday…
I Think I’ll Start Now by Dean Garrison
President Obama will be addressing the nation on
Tuesday to try to sway public opinion, and gain support for his
"limited" attacks on Syria. If
it's anything like his Sandy Hook speech he will likely sway a lot of idiots
who would rather simply hear someone spew propaganda than actually take the
time to read and do some research. I can't change that. It is what it is.
But I can at least speak to those who aren't afraid to look for the truth. We
all know what's coming. Barack Obama
will make an emotional plea on Tuesday and it is guaranteed that he will
mention these 400+ dead children that allegedly died in this chemical attack. I
am not disputing that children died. I will however dispute the numbers since it
was originally reported, by an independent source with no agenda, that the
total body count was 355. That included men, women and children.
Anyway, let's talk about some dead children. Barack Hussein Obama wants to talk
about dead children and exploit the situation to further his agenda. I can play
that game.
Tim Brown reported that President Barack Obama is responsible for a good number of
innocent dead children himself. His drone attacks in Pakistan and other corners of the globe have killed
hundreds of innocent children. the names and ages are actually listed.
But here is a short quote from the article: I'll leave you with the warmongering of Barack Obama via drone strikes
from PolicyMic from March of this year and ask yourself when the world will
tire of his tyranny and begin dealing with us because of it. Proponents of the
drone war, including President Barack Obama, claim that drone strikes are
precise and only target terrorists. But a study from Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute
finds that the number of Pakistani civilians killed in drone strikes is
"significantly and consistently underestimated" and that as many as
98% of those killed by drone strikes are civilians. While it is
ultimately impossible to get exact numbers, this means that for every "terrorist" killed by a drone
strike, anywhere between 10 and 50 civilians are killed. Read that sentence
again. Let it sink in. Obama has
authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan – four times the amount authorized by
George W. Bush. According to Global Research, over the past four years, Obama has authorized attacks in Pakistan
which have killed more than 800 innocent civilians and just 22 Al-Qaeda
officers. That constitutes at least 36 civilians per target. How many of those
are children? That's a lot of dead civilians that were killed by arbitrary force by an evil tyrant
who happens to reside in The White House. Sorry Mr. President. You can
fool most Americans most of the time (Abe Lincoln is rolling over in his grave)
but you can't fool me. Let's take it a step further and talk about some of the
atrocities that the Syrian Rebels have committed against children, because we
have reported on several over the past few months. Keep in mind that these are
the guys we are already helping and Obama wants to launch missiles on their
behalf. Who could forget the
heartbreaking image of the toddler that was chained to a railing and forced to
watch her parents executed by Syrian Rebels? What about the massacres of
Christian Villages staged by Syrian Rebels? There have been more than one. The
one that I linked to killed 120 innocent children. Who could forget the heart
wrenching story of these savage Syrian Rebels beheading a whole bus load of
civilians including a mother and her 40 day old baby? And if you really want to
know how sick these Obama allies are, check out the video of Syrian Rebels
beheading a priest. Did I lose you there? What does that have to do with
innocent kids? Well, if you can actually watch to the end of the video, which
took me multiple attempts, you will see that there are children who come to
examine the headless corpse at the end. "Someday you will also cut
Priests' heads off my son." So the humanitarian angle doesn't wash
for a man who is busy sending children
to their graves with drones and it's pretty obvious that the side he supports
has committed their fair share of war crimes against children. I could
have listed more but those cases highlight the situation fairly well. Keep this
in mind as you watch on Tuesday. A wide variety of credible sources, if you
follow the links in the articles. That certainly beats one guy hypnotizing with
lies. I caught Obama in a major lie the last time he had one of these
"talks. Of course, you probably didn't hear about that one since our
readership was very small at the time. I'd tell you to make this go viral, but
honestly you won't change many minds. We might wake a few people up and that's
all we can hope for. Every day we just
try to reach a few people who have an open mind. Those who worship Obama are
already in the event planning stages for Tuesday. Their mind is made up and
they are worried about wine selection and appetizers that are appropriate to
hear the emperor speak. We have to keep hammering them and waking up a few
people at a time. I hope it goes viral nonetheless. Why? Because even 1 or 2
people waking up is more than we had yesterday. The fight is not easy. We just
keep moving forward. That's all we can do. Link: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/09/flashback-obama-country-earth-tolerate-missiles-raining-citizens-outside-borders/
~~~~~
~~~~~~
Nearly Half of US Births Now Covered by Medicaid By Greg Richter
The number of U.S. births covered by Medicaid has
almost reached 50 percent, according to an analysis of federal health data
reported by Medical
Daily. The report showed that 48 percent of the 3.8 million births in 2010
were paid for by Medicaid, the government health program that helps pay medical
bills for the poor. That number was up
from 40 percent two years earlier. "As
states expand coverage, low-income women of childbearing age will be able to
obtain more continuous coverage before and between pregnancies," said lead
investigator Anne Markus of George Washington University School of Public
Health. Markus and her team said the
study would help in determining the changes being brought about through the
Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. "Now,
for the first time, researchers will have a comprehensive baseline that will
help them determine how increased access to services might change pregnancies
and ultimately birth outcomes," Markus said. Hawaii had the lowest
percentage of births paid for by Medicaid, about 25 percent. Louisiana had the highest, at 70 percent.
Most of the poorer Southern states had higher rates compared to northeastern
states.
The
big question not being asked, is why would someone that is poor and obviously
not have the ability to care for a baby "choose" to become
pregnant? Are we teaching irresponsibility? Or simply funding it?
~~~~~~
The Man-Made Global Warming Myth & The Liberal
Attachment To It by Frank
Camp
E. W. Howe said: "A
man will do more for his stubbornness than for his religion or his
country." If there is one characteristic that defines Liberals—finding
just one is tough—it would have to be stubbornness. Liberals
live in a museum in which everything
is behind a velvet rope, never to be touched. Once something is set into the
Liberal dogma, it cannot be altered. All of the circumstances around an
idea can change, but the central
conceit cannot do so, because that would mean that they were wrong about
something. And we know the Left is never wrong; they just misspeak. The
biggest Liberal pet project over the last 15 years has been anthropogenic
global warming. Numerous politicians and pundits have poured themselves into
making the case for man-made global warming. However, over the last few years, the so-called evidence in support of
global warming has come under scrutiny, and has begun to crumble. Now it seems
that yet another unfavorable bit of data has emerged. According to The
Daily Mail: "A chilly Arctic
summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice
than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent. The rebound from
2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming
would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013...The disclosure
comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and
scientific debate by revealing that global warming has ‘paused’ since the
beginning of 1997 – an event that the computer
models used by climate experts failed to predict." There is enough
solid evidence against man-made global warming that it is becoming more and more preposterous to
continue to propagate this myth. Yet the Left continues to push the
idea like the case for it is iron-clad. This is Liberal stubbornness. The average raging Liberal has a mind made
of concrete, unwilling and unable to shift focus. This is not only generally
unfortunate, but it is dangerous. A political Party whose ideology is set in stone, even against new and
compelling evidence, is a hazard to democracy. The life-breath of
democracy is the understanding of human nature, and the ability to compile
various bits of information to make informed decisions. Without that, it's just
blind voting. And blind voting will lead to the fall of our nation. The Liberal elites are blind to truth, and
so are their followers. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
~~~~~~
John Kerry: Pathetic Aging Hipsters and the Warmongers They Became By Stephanie Janiczek
Hipsters In the movie
Austin Powers, Dr. Evil makes a statement that is perfect for this time and
place, “There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster.” They exist
in our colleges, our high schools, government and even in our families. The kids who wore bell bottoms and railed at
LBJ and Nixon, who rioted at the Chicago 1968 convention and danced naked at
Woodstock are in their 60’s now. Strangely enough one of their leaders from
that heady time of acid trips, peace signs and Jane Fonda’s riding North Korean
anti-air craft artillery is our Secretary of State. Yes life’s journey
is strange and stranger for some than others. I’d like to ask John Kerry when
he decided to put away his torn blue jeans, his faded military jacket, the
peace sign necklace and beads and stop pretending to be the benevolent hippy he
claimed to be when he was young. And I
would like to ask that because that young, seemingly idealistic John Kerry
would have no clue who is the botoxed, face lifted, designer clothing wearing
member of the establishment he became. A cynic might ask would he? Ever
wonder about these ideologues? Even the radical leftists who looked like
something caught in a drain forty years ago, who are now part of Anna Wintour’s
circle of the highly fashionable? Are they poseurs? I am inclined, after years of unwanted familiarity with this breed of
human, to conclude that they are frauds. You can tell they are frauds just
through the last ten years of history. If George W. Bush was inclined
to take out Saddam Hussein over very obvious national security risks, these
aging hipsters lost their minds. Bashar al Assad poses no security threat to
the United States and is, in fact, holding down the truly dangerous Islamists
in his own country – and these same peacenik hipsters suddenly sound trumpets
like Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. One would think, if one was truly a
peaceful person and believed all of the tired clichés like “Make Love Not War”
and the fatigued chants like “Hey Hey LBJ how many kids have you killed today”,
that they’d be consistently against
war. Apparently they are not. And people wonder why the word phony gets tossed
at them. John Kerry was never a sellout. The plastic faced, aging
hipster has always been what he is. People like him never grow and never
evolve. How? They’re narcissists and
Washington, DC is the fly strip for narcissistic humanity – and John Kerry,
former senator, congressman and anti-American peace protestor, is one of the
biggest narcissists in DC. He always has been to. Recently, he told
peace protestors who interrupted Senate hearings twice that he once felt the
way they did. No, he did not. He never
did. He used the movement to gain notoriety and a name and propelled himself to
the House and then the Senate. If he truly had believed in the garbage he
spewed when he tossed his fake medals over the White House fence, he wouldn’t
be sitting at the helm of Foggy Bottom like a king toad on a rock. So
one could say most of the leftist radicals of the 60’s were hypocrites. Many
were knowingly hypocrites. John Kerry is merely the biggest example of their
hypocrisy. They became successful, bought BMWs, big houses, had large jobs.
Heck, one I knew worked for the Federal Reserve Bank. They were phonies and they still are. The fact anyone would take some aging radical seriously anymore is
beyond me. I can’t. And what about the Gandalf the Grey of these aging
hipsters, Bill Ayers? Ayers is a phony who lives in a big house in Chicago. If
he truly had believed in his mission to destroy the US he wouldn’t be abusing
the world like he does with his house, car and lifestyle. If you believe it,
live it. But don’t try and sell the rest of us on some grand notion about peace
or what-have-you and then turn around and become what you said you hated. Yes,
ladies and gentlemen, the aging hipsters are now the establishment. How’s that
for a 180? All of this only makes it easier to oppose any intervention in
Syria. This has nothing to do with Iran. Iran is a scapegoat unless Obama and
Kerry want to start World War Three and, honestly, it could. One would think
that the two smartest men ever ever ever would understand the ramifications of
what they are about to do. But alas, the attention span of a leftist only goes
as far as what he or she can gain personally. None of this has to do with our
national security. And despite the Obama-supporting AIPAC running to support
Syrian intervention, I don’t see how this helps Israel either. There’s
something to be said about the status quo with Syria and how it benefits
Israel. All this does is make for a widening mess. I also hate to break it to
aging hipster John Kerry, but Bashar al Assad is keeping the lid on the real
enemy here and that’s the Islamists. Apparently, a secular Pan Arab nationalist
like Assad is awful but an Allahu Ackbar screaming nut throwing grenades into a
Syrian Christian church is an ally to the former “Flower Children”.
Fascinating. Weird, but fascinating. This is what it’s come to. The generation that grew up in the 60’s
proves once again how completely disconnected from reality they are. And all of
us who came later are at the mercy of their whims. They never believed the
garbage they spewed. It was all based on attacking an establishment that they
wanted to control. Now these pot smoking, acid tripping types, who hated the
military and our projected power all over the globe, want to use that military
to start a war. Secretary Kerry, the man you were wouldn’t understand this; and
yet, because you are the ultimate phony, I think he’d understand perfectly.
~~~~~~
Republicans 'Have Done Nothing of Substance' to Block
Obamacare By Susan
Jones
In three weeks,
Americans will start signing up for government-mandated health insurance in the
new Obamacare exchanges, and that's fueling a conservative push to block the
law before it goes any further. So far, according to one conservative activist,
Republicans "have done nothing of substance" to get rid of Obamacare,
a law that passed without a single Republican vote.
"When the Democrats passed Obamacare, every
single Republican in the House and the Senate voted against it. Every single
Republican in the House and Senate vowed to do something about it," said
L. Brent Bozell III, the chairman of ForAmerica.org. He noted that Republicans
took control of the House in 2010 by campaigning against Obamacare. "Sean, the problem is, they have done
nothing about it," Bozell told Sean Hannity Monday night. And while
Republican lawmakers talk about all the things they have done to defund and
repeal Obamacare, "they have done nothing of substance," Bozell
said. "Here comes the one opportunity where you can say, 'Fund the whole
government, including the things we don't like. Fund it all. Not Obamacare,
which nobody wants.' It's extraordinary."
Some Republicans are giving lip service to defunding
Obamacare, said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for the Tea Party
Patriots: "They are playing games
and they are being dishonest," she told Hannity Monday night. "They
are saying things like, 'I am a cosponsor of the Ted Cruz bill.' But they will not sign the letter that
(Sen.) Mike Lee has, making a commitment, a pledge that they will fund all of
the government except for Obamacare, period, no matter what. They won't do
that." Martin and Bozell accuse some Republicans of being
deceitful. "It's going on as we speak," Bozell said. "Majority
Leader Eric Cantor today announced a defund move, defund legislation. It's a
sleight of hand. He should be ashamed of himself," Bozell said. "There
are two votes coming up," Bozell explained. "One is a defunding of
Obamacare, which has no bearing on anything. The president doesn't have to sign
it." The second vote is for a
continuing resolution that does fund Obamacare. "That's the one that
matters," Bozell said, calling Cantor's defund bill "a "cynical
attempt to manipulate. It is eye candy for his constituents." Bozell
and Martin say they've talked to voters across the country, and "people
are fed up with it." "They
are going to vote a lot of these people out," Bozell said. Sen.
Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has introduced legislation to defund Obamacare in the
continuing resolution, but to give the effort leverage, Republicans are being
urged to sign Sen. Mike Lee's letter, which
says "we will not support any continuing resolution or appropriations
legislation that funds further implementation or enforcement of
Obamacare." So far, at least 12 Senate Republicans have signed
Cruz's letter, and in the house, 80 Republicans have signed a similar pledge
written by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
Republicans say there's no point in supporting
separate legislation that defunds Obamacare, because those bills will never be
considered. The must-pass continuing
resolution is the only way to get the job done. Still, some Republicans,
including the leaders of the Senate and House, have refused to sign the pledge
to defund Obamacare in the continuing resolution, apparently unwilling to take
a stand that would risk a government shutdown.
~~~~~~
Likely the biggest Idiot in Washington: Pelosi Cites
‘Bright, Boundless Future’ Despite 90 Million Labor Force Dropouts
Democrats in Congress are working to build a “bright
and boundless future” for Americans despite “political obstruction” from their
Republican counterparts, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
The top Democrat in the House called the Bureau of
Labor Statistics’ (BLS) latest jobs report “a step forward” and said that
Democrats are “focused” on “priorities” that “promote economic opportunities
for middle class families.” However,
CNSNews previously reported that according to the same BLS report, the number of individuals who dropped out of
the labor force in August “has pushed past 90,000,000 for the first time.” The
number of Americans who are no longer part of the nation’s labor force
increased by 9.9 million under the Obama administration. This is just a minor
"fact" for Pelosi. “Democrats are
working to move our country forward in building a strong economy that delivers
the bright and boundless future that every American deserves,” Pelosi insisted.
She also criticized
Republicans for “allowing Americans to languish under devastating sequester
cuts.” What?
“Congressional Republicans must put aside political
obstruction and start working with Democrats to deliver a budget that will
create jobs, expand the economy, strengthen the middle class, and responsibly
reduce the deficit,” Pelosi said. What does she think the conservatives in
both houses have been trying to do? That
while CNSNews also reported
that the number of Americans who actually held jobs during August dropped
115,000 from July, for a labor force
participation rate of just 63.2 percent, “the lowest it has been since August
1978.” So, what have been the priorities, Nancy? More Government jobs? In August, there was “an increase of 324,000 people on the government payroll,”
while “the workforce in the private
sector fell from 113,164,000 to 112,886,000 – a decline of 278,000.” How can the people that vote for this
woman look themselves in the mirror?
~~~~~~
A constitutional moment to limit the presidency - George Will is a columnist for the Washington Post
In London exile in 1940, Charles de Gaulle decided “it was up to me to take responsibility for France” (“c’etait a moi d’assumer la France”). No U.S. president should assume he is, as de Gaulle almost mystically did, the nation, or is solely responsible for it. Remember this tonight when Barack Obama defends his choice to attack Syria. U.S. power and security are somewhat dependent on a president’s stature, which should not be diminished unnecessarily. Neither, however, should America’s well-being be equated with a president’s policy preferences or political health. The real but limited importance of presidential prestige, and the real but limited diminution of it that would result from blocking Obama’s attack, both matter. But so do the manifest and manifold weaknesses of his argument.
George Orwell, who said insincerity is the enemy of clear language, would understand why our government talks of “quantitative easing” rather than printing money, and uses “enhanced interrogation” and “extraordinary rendition” rather than more concrete denotations. The debate about Syria has featured a peculiar phrase, “the vetted opposition.” Used by those advocating intervention, it implies that most anti-Assad fighters have been investigated enough to dispel doubts about them as appropriate beneficiaries of U.S. actions. But John McCain’s breezy assurance (“I have met them”) is insufficient. Skepticism is warranted, given the prodigies of confusion in administration statements, including historical amnesia.
Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons is only his most recent, and he is not the first to have used such weapons in war since the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing them. But because attacking Syria is said to be necessary as reinforcement of the 1925 “norm,” it matters that the norm has been violated before. In the 1960s, Egypt used chemical weapons against Yemen. Saddam Hussein used them not only against disobedient Iraqis but in the 1980-88 war with Iran. A March 23, 1984, CIA report said: “Iraq has begun using nerve agents ... (which) could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” A new article by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy says that in 1988: “The United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.”
U.S. officials denied acquiescing in such attacks because Iraq never announced them. But Harris and Aid quote retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, a military attache in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, saying, “The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.”
The argument for attacking Syria to strengthen a “norm” may be weaker than the argument for Congress halting the attack to strengthen constitutional balance. The outcome of the vote may be less important than the fact of the vote. Through the physics of our Madisonian politics – one institution’s action producing another’s reaction – the nation has reached a constitutional moment.
Every policy choice occurs in a context conditioned by other choices. Obama’s Syrian choice comes after multiple executive excesses that have provoked Congress to react against its marginalization, a product of its supine passivity regarding Obama’s unilateral lawmaking. It is unfortunate that a foreign policy decision has catalyzed congressional resistance to presidential aggrandizement on many fronts. But no congressional vote about Syria can damage the presidency as much as Obama has done by overreaching, and by sophistical rhetoric that refutes his appeals for unconditional trust. The shriveling of his presidency probably became irreversible when laughter greeted his sophomoric claim that not he but “the world” drew a red line regarding chemical weapons.
After incessant calls for “bipartisanship” to supplant “obstructionism,” there has emerged a broad bipartisan coalition to obstruct his Syrian policy. His policy is doomed without many Democratic senators swallowing their pride, disregarding past convictions and becoming presidential poodles. Such canine obedience will express obedience to progressivism’s unchanging essence – exaltation of executive discretion and disparagement of the separation of powers. That is, implacable impatience with Madison’s constitutional architecture. Obama hardly has de Gaulle’s mystical identification of himself with his nation, or de Gaulle’s desperate reason for such a conflation. However, Obama’s recent references to “my military” have a French antecedent in Louis XIV’s l’etat c’est moi. This president has inadvertently made the case for strengthening the presidency by pruning the office’s pretensions.
~~~~~~
Syria and Obama By Thomas Sowell
I cannot see why even a
single American, a single Israeli or a single Syrian civilian should be killed
as a result of a token U.S. military action, undertaken simply to spare Barack
Obama the embarrassment of doing nothing, after his ill-advised public
ultimatum to the Syrian government to not use chemical weapons was ignored. Some people
say that some military response is necessary, not to spare Obama a personal
humiliation, but to spare the American presidency from losing all credibility —
and therefore losing the ability to deter future threats to the United States
without bloodshed.
There is no question
that the credibility of the presidency — regardless of who holds that office —
is a major asset of this country. Another way of saying the same thing is that
Barack Obama has recklessly risked the credibility of future presidents, and
the future safety of this country, by his glib words and weak actions.
Some people who disagree with Obama's issuance of a
public ultimatum to the Assad regime in the first place, and who also disagree
with his recent threat of military action against Syria, nevertheless say that
we must back up that threat now, simply to forestall future dangers from a loss
of American credibility in the eyes of other countries, including both our
enemies and our allies. But will a
transparently token military action preserve American credibility? And dare we
risk an unintended escalation, such as began both World Wars in the 20th
century? Since so little real history is taught in even our prestigious
colleges and universities, it may be worth noting how World War II — the most
catastrophic war in human history — began.
When a weak and vacillating leader, Britain's Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain, belatedly saw Hitler for what he was, after years
of trying to appease him, he issued a public ultimatum that if Germany carried
out its impending invasion of Poland, Britain would declare war. By this time,
Hitler had only contempt for Chamberlain, as Putin today has only contempt for
Obama. Hitler went ahead with his invasion of Poland. Chamberlain then felt he
had to declare war. That is how World War II began. Britain's action did not
save Poland, but only jeopardized its own survival. Unintended
consequences are at least as common in military actions on the world stage as
they are in domestic policies that start out with lofty words and end with
sordid and even catastrophic consequences. Assurances from either President
Barack Obama or Senator John McCain as to the limited nature of the military
actions they advocate mean nothing. As
someone said, long ago, once the shooting starts all plans go out the window.
If a purely token
military strike will do little or nothing more to preserve our national
credibility than will a failure to act at all, why get people killed to spare
Barack Obama a personal humiliation?
This man's runaway ego has already produced too many
disasters at home and abroad, and nowhere more so than in the Middle East. A
personal humiliation may be all that can make him stop and think before
shooting off his mouth in the future, without thinking through the consequences
beforehand — as he clearly has not done in this case, as shown by his recent
delays and vacillations. Nor is it at
all clear that his previous policies and actions in the Middle East were well
thought out, unless he was deliberately trying to weaken the position of the
Western world, including Israel. Whatever the Obama rhetoric, the
reality is that his policies in Egypt and Libya have led to replacing stable
regimes, at peace with Israel and the West, and tolerant of their own Christian
minorities, with chaotic regimes in which fanatical anti-Western terrorists
have played a large and growing role, with hostility to Israel and murderous
attacks on Christians in their own country. Barack Obama will try to salvage his policy and his presidency with a
speech to the nation. Rhetoric is his strong suit. The big question is: How
many Americans have learned to distinguish between his soaring words and his
sorry record? Matters of life and death can hinge on the answer to that
question.
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