OBAMA’S BENGHAZI PERFORMANCE FOUND WANTING, SUPPORT ERODING

Richard Nixon knew he was in trouble when he lost the confidence of his own side, the Republicans. It was Senator Howard Baker (R-Tennessee) who asked the now famous question regarding Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate break-in: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

In today’s Washington, that kind of honest non-partisan approach to holding our leaders accountable is notably absent. There are no Howard Bakers anymore (and way to many Howard Deans!). Beginning with the multiplicity of scandals during the Clinton Administration, in which Congressional Democrats and the Washington Press Corps not only ignored malfeasance on the part of the Executive, but worked to protect “their guy” from any blame or consequence; running interference for one’s guy from “partisan” attacks has replace honest fact-finding and watchdog oversight in our national politics.

President Obama, though, just might be feeling the rug being pulled out from under him; as he appears to be losing support on the Left, his traditional bastion of support. Here, imbedded in her piece on Clintonesque cover-up deja vu, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (no Republican sympathiser) is scathing in her criticism of the President and his Administration’s handling of the Benghazi fiasco.

Remember, Nixon did not have a direct hand in the Watergate break-in. What sunk the Nixon Presidency was the President and his aides’ attempt at a cover-up. It was lies and obfuscation that nailed the lid on Nixon’s coffin.

But only because principled Republicans sided with Democrats in Congress in demanding a higher standard of accountability from our Chief Executive.

Obama is not yet in trouble. As long as the national press and Congressional Democrats are willing to shield him, he can survive any scandal. But if Dowd’s example is just the beginning of an erosion of support from his base (the Left-leaning press), then Obama may find his Presidency on very shaky legs.

When Myths Collide in the Capital

By  MAUREEN DOWD

Published: May 11, 2013   

THE capital is in the throes of déjà vu and preview as it plunges back into Clinton Rules, defined by a presidential aide on the hit ABC show “Scandal” as damage control that goes like this: “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true, it’s old news.”

The conservatives appearing on Benghazi-obsessed Fox News are a damage patrol with an approach that goes like this: “Lies, paranoia, subpoena, impeach, Watergate, Iran-contra.”

(Though now that the I.R.S. has confessed to targeting Tea Party groups, maybe some of the paranoia is justified.)

Welcome to a glorious spring weekend of accusation and obfuscation as Hillaryland goes up against Foxworld.

The toxic theatrics, including Karl Rove’s first attack ad against Hillary, cloud a simple truth: The administration’s behavior before and during the attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.

After his Libyan intervention, President Obama knew he was sending diplomats and their protectors into a country that was no longer a country, a land rife with fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.

Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Chris Stevens were rushing to make the flimsy Benghazi post permanent as a sign of good faith with Libyans, even as it sat ringed by enemies.

The hierarchies at State and Defense had a plodding response, failing to make any superhuman effort as the siege waxed and waned over eight hours.

In an emotional Senate hearing on Wednesday, Stevens’s second-in-command, Gregory Hicks, who was frantically trying to help from 600 miles away in Tripoli, described how his pleas were denied by military brass, who said they could not scramble planes and who gave a “stand-down” order to four Special Forces officers in Tripoli who were eager to race to Benghazi.

“My reaction was that, O.K., we’re on our own,” Hicks said quietly. He said the commander of that Special Forces team told him, “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more” chutzpah “than someone in the military.”

The defense secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, insisted, “We quickly responded.” But they responded that they would not respond. As Emma Roller and David Weigel wrote in Slate: “The die was cast long before the attack, by the weak security at the consulate, and commanders may have decided to cut their losses rather than risking more casualties. And that isn’t a story anyone prefers to tell.”

Truth is the first casualty here when competing fiefs protect their mythologies. Some unhinged ideologues on the right cling to the mythology that Barry and Hillary are out to destroy America.

In the midst of a re-election campaign, Obama aides wanted to promote the mythology that the president who killed Osama was vanquishing terror. So they deemed it problematic to mention any possible Qaeda involvement in the Benghazi attack.

Looking ahead to 2016, Hillaryland needed to shore up the mythology that Clinton was a stellar secretary of state. Prepared talking points about the attack included mentions of Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group, but the State Department got those references struck. Foggy Bottom’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, a former Cheney aide, quashed a we-told-you-so paragraph written by the C.I.A. that said the spy agency had “produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya,” and had warned about five other attacks “against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British ambassador’s convoy.”

Nuland fretted about “my building leadership,” and with backing from Ben Rhodes, a top White House aide, lobbied to remove those reminders from the talking points because they “could be abused by members” of Congress “to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”

Hicks said that Beth Jones, an under secretary of state, bristled when he asked her why Susan Rice had stressed the protest over an anti-Muslim video rather than a premeditated attack — a Sunday show marathon that he said made his jaw drop. He believes he was demoted because he spoke up.

Hillary’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, also called Hicks to angrily ask why a State Department lawyer had not been allowed to monitor every meeting in Libya with Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who visited in October. (The lawyer did not have the proper security clearance for one meeting.) Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, has been a rabid Hillary critic on Fox News since the attack. Hicks said he had never before been scolded for talking to a lawmaker.

All the factions wove their own mythologies at the expense of our deepest national mythology: that if there is anything, no matter how unlikely or difficult, that we can do to try to save the lives of Americans who have volunteered for dangerous assignments, we must do it.

Islam: Violence Emanates from its Core

By Word Warrior and Russell Farris

The Boston Marathon bombings, by a seemingly “average” college student and his more obviously troubled and radicalized older brother has led to discussion on our policy towards Muslim immigrants; and our Visa policy regarding foreign students in general. What it should also trigger is a meaningful policy discussion on the nature of Islamic violence. Because unlike any other religion in the world, violence is an integral part of Islam.

The problem lies within the Quran itself.

The Quran is no easy read. It is also not a gentle book of enlightening prose. The “Prophet” was no Kahil Gibran, and the Quran is not “The Prophet“. It is the hodge-podge mumblings of a mean old pedophile. Muhammad’s words were collected during his epileptic-like seizures (according to Philip Schaff, during his revelations Muhammad “sometimes growled like a camel, foamed at his mouth, and streamed with perspiration.” ^[1]). A study of the book (a task for only the most perseverant) leads to the inescapable conclusion that believers are repeatedly directed to convert, enslave, or kill all non-believers (in that order).

I will grant that most educated Muslims (particularly American Muslims) choose to ignore those instructions; or try to explain them away. They are the nice face of Islam. When explained by such spokesmen, “Jihad”  becomes an internal, spiritual struggle; rather than holy war against the infidel. Islam becomes a religion of peace, ignoring the fact that the Muslim World (and all other lands with a large Muslim minority) are the most violent, non-peaceful places on earth. Since 9/11/01, there has been an average of 5 attacks a day by Muslim terrorists!

But to the truly dedicated, observant, fundamentalist Muslims these more cerebral (nice) Muslims aren’t really Muslims at all. To the ones we call “radicals”, a real Muslim has the Allah-given task of converting, enslaving, or killing the rest of us.

“Good Muslims” are commanded to kill other Muslims who stray from the path.  Consequently, the nice Muslims have to keep their mouths shut. This slows down the spread of the nicer varieties of Islam; while the radicalization of Mosques (or “cells” within those Mosques) goes unabated.

This week has seen even dedicated liberals, like Bob Beckel, call for a slowing of Muslim immigration and a reexamination of our Student Visa policy. But the real problem is how do we distinguish the nice Muslim immigrants from those that want to kill us and subvert our democracy (which they consider Satanic)? The oath of allegiance taken by naturalized citizens, to the country and constitution, should weed out the bad ones. Except that the swearing of false oaths and other means of deceiving the infidel are an integral part of Islam, when deemed necessary in the defense of Islam. And as we see in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, even seemingly nice Muslims can change into bad ones.

Progressives have a pathological need to ignore the differences in people. Though profiling is a proven, effective tool of law enforcement, liberals consider this tantamount to racism. David Sirota, for example, objects to us treating white, non-Islamic terrorists differently than non-white or Islamic terrorists (“Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American”; Salon, Apr 16, 2013).

But there are almost zero white non-Islamic terrorists. Those few that did exist in the recent past, such as Germany’s infamous Baader–Meinhof gang, the Irish Republican Army, or our own Weather Underground (compliments of the President’s friend Bill Ayres) were leftist radicals or a part of nationalist liberation movements; and have mostly faded away after the fall of the Iron Curtain. If any white, non-Islamic groups should commit acts of terror they should indeed be treated just like non-white or Islamic terrorists. (The speedy trial and subsequent execution of Timothy McVeigh demonstrate that we, in fact, do  just that; undermining Sirota’s contention to the contrary.)

Most horrible things done today by white non-Muslims are not acts of terrorism: they are individual manifestations of deranged minds. White, non-Islamic killers are almost never parts of larger groups that brain-wash them, train them, or finance them. That is, at this point in history, a manifestation of radical Islam.

Religiously, it is unique to Islam. There are no Christian terrorist organizations or movements, financing and sponsoring terrorism in the name of Christ. Nor are there any such Buddhist nor Hindu groups.

Liberals hate the idea of evil. But radical Islam is as evil in the 21st Century as Christianity sometimes was in the Middle Ages. And Islam has no prospect of getting any better, of internal reformation because the evil in it comes from its most fundamental tenets.

The evil in Christianity came from ignoring its fundamental tenets.

[1] Schaff, P., & Schaff, D. S. (1910). History of the Christian church. Third edition. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Volume 4, Chapter III, section 42 “Life and Character of Mohammed”

IS OBAMA ALREADY A LAME DUCK? OR IS HE JUST LAME?

The opposing party always gets on the phone or gathers in what used to be Georgetown dens to denigrate the new guy and vow to fight him to the end. That’s how blowhards blow.

by Peggy Noonan

The Wall Street Journal: May 4, 2013

I  think we’re all agreed the president is fading—failing to lead, to break through, to show he’s not at the mercy of events but, to some degree at least, in command of them. He couldn’t get a win on gun control with 90% public support. When he speaks on immigration reform you get the sense he’s setting it back. He’s floundering on Syria. The looming crisis on implementation of ObamaCare has begun to fill the news. Even his allies are using the term “train wreck.” ObamaCare is not only the most slovenly written major law in modern American history, it is full of sneaked-in surprises people are just discovering. The Democrats of Washington took advantage of the country’s now-habitual distractedness: The country, now seeing what’s coming in terms of taxes and fees, will not be amused. Mr. Obama’s brilliant sequester strategy—scare the American public into supporting me—flopped. Congress is about to hold hearings on Boston and how the brothers Tsarnaev slipped through our huge law-enforcement and immigration systems. Benghazi and what appear to be its coverups drags on and will not go away; press secretary Jay Carney was reduced to saying it happened “a long time ago.” It happened in September. The economy is stuck in low-growth, employment in no-growth. The president has about a month to gather himself together on the budget, tax reform and an immigration deal before Congress goes into recess. What are the odds?

Republicans don’t oppose him any less after his re-election, and Democrats don’t seem to support him any more. This week he was reduced to giving a news conference in which he said he’s got juice, reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. It was bad. And he must be frustrated because he thinks he’s trying. He gives speeches, he gives interviews, he says words, but he doesn’t really rally people, doesn’t create a wave that breaks over the top of the Capitol Dome and drowns the opposition, or even dampens it for a moment.

Mr. Obama’s problem isn’t really the Republicans. It’s that he’s supposed to be popular. He’s supposed to have some sway, some pull and force. He was just re-elected. He’s supposed to have troops. “My bill is launched, unleash the hounds of war.” But nobody seems to be marching behind him. Why can’t he rally people and get them to press their congressmen and senators? I’m not talking about polls, where he hovers in the middle of the graph, but the ability to wield power.

The president seems incapable of changing anything, even in a crisis. He’s been scored as passive and petulant, but it’s the kind of passivity people fall into when nothing works. “People do what they know how to do,” a hardened old pol once said, meaning politicians use whatever talent they have, and when it no longer works they continue using it.

There’s no happy warrior in there, no joy of the battle, just acceptance of what he wearily sees as the landscape. He’d seem hapless if he weren’t so verbally able.

So, the president is stuck. But it’s too early to write him off as a lame duck because history has a way of intervening. A domestic or international crisis that is well-handled, or a Supreme Court appointment, can make a president relevant. There are 44 months left to Mr. Obama’s presidency. He’s not a lame duck, he’s just lame.

*** Which has me thinking of two things that have weakened the Obama presidency and haven’t been noted. One was recent and merely unhelpful. The other goes back, and encouraged a mindset that became an excuse, perhaps a fatal one.

The recent one: In the days after the 2012 election the Democrats bragged about their technological genius and how it turned the election. They told the world about what they’d done—the data mining, the social networking, that allowed them to zero in on Mrs. Humperdink in Ward 5 and get her to the polls. It was quite impressive and changed national politics forever. But I suspect their bragging hurt their president. In 2008 Mr. Obama won by 9.5 million votes. Four years later, with all the whizbang and money, he won by less than five million. When people talk about 2012 they don’t say the president won because the American people endorsed his wonderful leadership, they say he won because his team outcomputerized the laggard Republicans.

This has left him and his people looking more like cold technocrats who know how to campaign than leaders who know how to govern. And it has diminished claims of a popular mandate. The president’s position would be stronger now if more people believed he had one.

What damaged the Obama presidency more, looking back, was, ironically, the trash-talking some Republican leaders indulged in after the 2008 campaign. It entered their heads at the Obama White House and gave them a warped sense of the battlefield.

In a conference call with conservative activists in July, 2009, then-Sen. Jim DeMint said of the president’s health-care bill, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Not long after, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quoted as saying that the GOP’s primary goal was to make Mr. Obama a one-term president.

The press hyped this as if it were something new, a unique and epic level of partisan animus. Members of the administration also thought it was something new. It made them assume no deals with Republicans were possible, and it gave them a handy excuse they still use: “It’s not us, they vowed from the beginning they wouldn’t work with us!”

But none of it was new. The other sidealways vows to crush you. Anyone who’d been around for a while knew the Republicans were trying to sound tough, using hyperbole to buck up the troops. It’s how they talk when they’re on the ropes. But the president and his staffers hadn’t been around for a while. They were young. They didn’t understand what they were hearing was par for the course.

Bill Clinton’s foes made fierce vows about him, the enemies of Both Bushes did the same. The opposing party always gets on the phone or gathers in what used to be Georgetown dens to denigrate the new guy and vow to fight him to the end. That’s how blowhards blow. When Reagan came in they vowed to take him down, and it was personal. Speaker Tip O’Neill called him “ignorant” and a “disgrace” and said it was “sinful” that he was president. He called Reagan “a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America” and said: “He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood.” Chris Matthews, an O’Neill staffer, says he once greeted Reagan in the Capitol with the words: “Mr. President, welcome to the room where we plot against you.”

They did. Reagan knew it.

Yet he had no problem dealing successfully with O’Neill. He didn’t moan, “Oh they hate me, it’s no use!”

Note to the next White House: There’s always gambling at Rick’s place. It’s never a shock and not an excuse. It’s business as usual. And if you’re a leader you can lead right past it.

 

WHY SMART PEOPLE (INCLUDING ME! ) DO DUMB THINGS

Like many of you, I often reflect on seminal (or merely embarrassing) events in my life; and shake my head in disbelief. How could I have been so dumb?

In 2000 I started my own company. This was my second attempt in 3 years, after having worked 15 years in a certain industry and rising about as high as could working for someone else. Over the next 5 years, I made a lot of money and the company was poised for true success.

Then, in 2006, it all came crashing down.

A “perfect storm” of bad circumstances and bad decisions on my part left me broke and nearly emotionally broken. I was able (barely) to salvage enough of my company to sell it off to a partner for enough money to survive on.

Much of what went wrong for me that year can be found in the list below.

Smart people (and most who know me would describe me in those terms) do dumb things. Maybe not as often as truly dumb people; but more often than we would like to admit.

Business aside, we make a lot of our worst mistakes in our personal lives and choices.

As example, I just got out of a 10 month relationship with a young woman less than half my age. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out.

Now, she was very mature, smart, witty, pretty, liked a lot of the same things I did, and really appreciated and preferred older men. Sounded promising, right?

All of my male friends gave me two thumbs up. Most were at least mildly envious. One advised me to “put a ring on her finger” ASAP!

My female friends saw things far more clearly. From the beginning, my very best friend (a wise woman indeed) described it as a slow-moving train wreck; one she just couldn’t bear to watch. Most others just looked at me with that “you poor dumb shmuck” look, smiled sadly and shook their heads.

I tried telling one that though “weird”, our relationship weirdly worked. She scoffed at that openly, replying, “You just THINK its working!”

Of course, she was right.

This wasn’t the first or worst bad decision I’ve made regarding my choice of feminine companions; just the most recent. Being pretty wise when it comes to analyzing other people’s relationships doesn’t make me any less stupid when it comes to my own…

We all make mistakes, even the smartest of us. But its often surprising when really smart people make really dumb mistakes. Here is a list of the Top 10 reasons that they do:

Top 10 Reasons Why Smart People Do Dumb Things

1. They’re too close to the situation. Lack of  objectivity or perspective is probably the most common reason, but not the only  one, by any means.
2. They’re in uncharted territory. People tend to forget  that intelligence or  experience doesn’t necessarily translate from one situation or company to the  next, as we discussed in Carol Bartz and the CEO’s Dilemma.  Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
3. They’re distracted. They’ve got other things or  priorities on their mind and they’re just not paying attention. Sometimes, it’s  that simple. Like Occam’s Razor says, all things being equal, the simplest  solution is usually the right one.
4. They’ve made up their mind based on limited data. Ever  try to have an objective, intelligent discussion with someone who’s already made  up his mind about something? Didn’t turn out too well, did it?
5. Their assumptions are flawed. As a really smart high-tech CEO once said to me, most  mistakes are the result of bad assumptions. It’s true. Every conclusion and  decision is based on assumptions. The logic can be perfect, but if the  underlying assumptions are flawed, all bets are off.
6. They feel like it. People have a nasty habit of  connecting behavior and decision-making with thinking, reasoning, and logic.  That’s just not the way it is. Both  thoughts and feelings play a role in everything  we do, and the split varies constantly. So, a smart person can do a dumb thing  if the mood is right, so to speak. That’s usually followed by a smartass like me  saying, “He should have known better.”
7. They’re panicking. Emotion to the extreme, usually  fear or anxiety, drives the fight or flight response and, sometimes, behavior or  decision-making that may, in hindsight, prove unwise, to put it nicely.
8. The second law of thermodynamics. In the physical  world, entropy tends to increase. People are no different. Even biological organisms obey physical laws. Smart decisions tend to bring order to chaos; dumb  decisions tend to have the opposite effect. Thus, smart decisions are less  likely and harder to achieve. In other words, s**t happens.
9. People change. People age, things change. Our ideals,  goals, motives, mental state, and of course, behavior and actions, all change  over time. Chrissie Hynde of  the Pretenders calls itTime The Avenger:  “Nobody’s permanent; everything’s on loan here.”
10. They’re off their meds or their rocker. What, you  think I’m kidding? You think really smart people can’t have psychological  problems, temporary mental lapses, brain farts?  Haven’t you ever said  someone’s “lost his mind” or is “off her rocker?” Then there’s the whole meds  thing. They can be just off them or just on them? Either one can trigger erratic  behavior.

(Read more:  http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-24/strategy/30197335_1_assumptions-ceos-smart-people#ixzz2ROtn5AVD)

OBAMA SNUBS A GREAT LADY

“I find the President smug, arrogant, and when it comes to politics, classless.”

In the decisive years of the Cold War, when America and the West finally achieved victory over the Soviet Union and its world-communist allies, freeing Eastern Europe and reuniting Germany; no ally stood closer or provided more support than Great Britain.

Led by the remarkable “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher”, the “Special Relationship” between Britain and America was never more special than during the 1980s. Prime Minister Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan worked hand-in-glove to bring down the Iron Curtain (working with Pope John Paul II as well, the third key player of the Big Three that crafted the Soviet downfall).

She and Reagan were friends as well as leaders of two allied countries. In the face of what seemed, in the early 80s, a dire threat from an aggressive Soviet Union and its proxies around the globe, neither the Iron Lady nor President Reagan “were for turning”.

So its with a sick anger that I hear today that at the funeral of this most special friend of America, President Obama has deliberately snubbed Lady Thatcher and Britain; by sending no high level representative! When a foreign head of state (or significant former head of state) dies, it is customary for the Administration to send a high-level delegation. That is the job of the Vice President: attend the funerals of foreign leaders. At the least, our Secretary of State can “pinch hit” in the VP’s absence.

When the President of Ghana died last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a delegation to the funeral. Could not John Kerry, at the least, have attended the Iron Lady’s funeral??

This is not the first snub of our closest ally by this President, who has in the past made his personal distaste for Britain all too clear.

When he first took office, the President infamously sent packing a bust of Winston Churchill, that had decorated the White House. When the Queen visited, he arrogantly gave her an ipod collection of his speeches. When former  Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited, he gave the President The Prime Minister gave Mr. Obama an ornamental pen holder, made from the timbers  of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet; a thoughtful, significant gift. What did Obama give in return?

Why, 25 DVDs of classic movies.

I wish I was joking.

Now we have another, perhaps ultimate snub. The funeral of the greatest post-WWII Prime Minister comes, and Obama blows it off. (Two Republican former Secretary’s of State did attend: George Schultz and James Baker.) This follows close on the heals of Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez unsuccessful attempt to block a resolution honoring the late Lady Thatcher in the Senate!

So its not just Obama, apparently. Other liberal Democrats have a visceral and (to my mind) distasteful dislike for one of America’s greatest friends.

Could it be that some on the left still begrudge our victory in the Cold War; and Thatcher’s support of Reagan (who they also hated) in brining this about? Or do they just dislike her because her conservative economic policies rescued Britain from economic decay and restored in Briton’s a national pride the leftist Labor’s policies had undermined?

I have never liked this President. I find him smug, arrogant, and when it comes to politics, classless.

Today, my judgment of him has been vindicated.

Here’s John Heyward of Human Event’s take on this snub to Thatcher and Great Britain:

There’s no other way to interpret this: it’s a deliberate and profoundly embarrassing slight to a vital American ally.  Granted, the United Kingdom isn’t quite as vital to American history, culture, business, or strategic interest as a world-straddling hyper-power like Ghana.  From Front Page Magazine:

When John Atta Mills, the President of Ghana, died last year, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally led the delegation to his funeral along with such figures as Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, General Carter F. Ham, the Commander of the United States Africa Command and Grant T. Harris, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs. But under Barack Obama, what Ghana gets, the United Kingdom does not. Instead the US delegation to the Thatcher funeral looks a lot like the US delegation to the Chavez funeral. Two former secretaries of state friendly to Thatcher and several congressmen who agreed with her views, including Michelle Bachmann. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is coming. Barack Obama obviously is not. Neither is any high ranking member of his government. As at Chavez’s funeral, the highest ranking Federal official will be the charge d’affaires at the American embassy. It’s hard to get any lower profile than that.

The UK Daily Mail reports this is not being taken well across the pond, where “friends and allies of Baroness Thatcher expressed ‘surprise and disappointment’ last night as it emerged President Obama is not planning to send any serving member of his Administration to her funeral.”

Former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox, Lady Thatcher’s closest ally in modern-day politics, said: ‘I think it would be both surprising and disappointing if after President Obama’s fulsome tribute to Lady Thatcher, the American administration did not send a senior serving member to represent them.’ Sir Gerald Howarth, chairman of the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group of MPs and peers, said: ‘The bonds forged between the UK and the US through Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in ending the Cold War and liberating millions of people. ‘That the present administration feels unable to be represented as the world marks the extraordinary contribution Margaret Thatcher made will be a source of disappointment to those who served with her in that great endeavour.’

The snub is especially noteworthy because the Queen herself will attend the funeral, a decision that “effectively elevated it to a state occasion unprecedented for a political figure in Britain since the death of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.” According to the UK Sun, the British government is miffed that Angela Merkel won’t be attending from Germany, although at least she’ll be sending her foreign minister.  ”But Downing Street is most angered by rejections from Obama, First Lady Michelle, and Vice-President Joe Biden,” the Sun continues.  ”A No 10 source said last night: ‘We are a little surprised by the White House’s reaction, as we were expecting a high-profile attendance.’” The given reason for the complete lack of Administration officials at Lady Thatcher’s service is that everyone is busy pushing gun control legislation back in the United States, as the Daily Mail explains:

The US embassy insisted no snub was intended, but confirmed that Mr Baker and Mr Schulz would represent the US. ‘This is a hugely significant week in terms of US domestic politics,’ a spokesman added. He said that both the First Lady and the Vice President were ‘the President’s point people on gun control’, adding: ‘This is a week when there is a lot of movement on Capitol Hill on gun control issues.’

Every single member of the Administration is required to shove a half-baked grab bag of gun control measures nobody will actually read through Congress?  Half of the proposals heading for the Senate floor are born-to-die distractions, whose only purpose is to get voted down by red-state Democrats so they can polish up their “pro-gun” merit badges for the benefit of gullible constituents.  How about if Americans just keep our Constitutional rights, leaving Obama free to bring a blue-ribbon delegation to show proper respect to a towering figure of Western history?

THE OBAMA BUDGET PLAN

Comic-songster Ray Stevens’ satirical look at Obamanomics.

WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE NEW (OLD) BARBARIANS AT OUR GATES

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph. Robert E. Howard

(The following essay is excerpted from “Our New Old Enemies”; by Col. Ralph Peters. From Parameters, Summer 1999, pp. 22-37.)

In our own Western cultural history, the fiercest military brutalities and the most savage wars were fought over faith, whether the Crusades or defensive wars against Muslims, campaigns of suppression against dissenting Christians, the great religious wars of the 16th and, especially, 17th centuries, or the 20th century’s world wars between secular religions.

Now our history is playing out in other flesh. When Indonesian rioters murder Chinese merchants, or when the Sudanese Muslims who hold power butcher and enslave the Christians in their country’s south, their behavior is not inhuman. On the contrary, it is timelessly human.

Beware of any enemy motivated by supernatural convictions or great moral schemes. Even when he is less skilled and ill-equipped, his fervor may simply wear you down. Our military posture could not be more skewed. We build two-billion-dollar bombers, but we cannot cope with bare-handed belief.

…if we want to understand the warriors of the world and the fury that drives them, we had better open our minds to the power of belief; and the power of barbaric hatred.

Consider the Iliad. Read that great poem one more time, without the prejudices we have learned. You will find that the triumphant Greeks were the devious, the barbarous, the murderous. The Trojans were the urban, civilized, and tolerant. Troy stood for learning, piety, and decency. Its mistake was to humiliate implacable barbarians, without the will to destroy them. The Trojans fought to be left alone in their comfortable world. The Greeks fought for revenge, spoils, and the pleasure of slaughter.  The defeated Trojan monarch, King Priam, was a decent man who watched the war from behind his walls and had to beg for the return of his son’s mangled body. He was presidential in his dignity.

The Greeks won.

We are not Trojans. We are far mightier. But we have not learned to understand, much less rule, minds and hearts and souls. The only moral we need to cull from the Iliad is that it is foolish to underestimate the complexity and determination of the killers from the other shore.

From that heritage we Americans have developed our historical belief that all men want peace, that all conflict can be resolved through compromise and understanding. It leads to the diplomatic equivalent of Sunday-night snake-handling–faith in the power of negotiations to allay hatred.

Because we are privileged and reasonably content with our corner of the planet, we find peace desirable. There is nothing wrong with this. The problem arises when we assume that all other men, no matter how discontented, jealous, disenfranchised, and insulted, want peace as well. Our faith in man is truly a blind faith. Many human beings have no stake in peace. They draw no advantage from the status quo.

We even see this in our own fortunate country. A disproportionate share of crime is committed by those with the least stake in society–the excluded and marginalized with little or nothing to lose.

MAN THE KILLER

Of all the notions I have advanced over the years, the only one that has met with consistent rejection is my statement that men like to kill. I do not believe that all men like to kill. At the extreme, there are those saintly beings who would sacrifice their own lives before taking the life of another. The average man will kill if compelled to, in uniform in a war, or in self-defense, but has no evident taste for it.

Men react differently to the experience of killing. Some are traumatized. Others simply move on with their lives. But there is at least a minority of human beings–mostly male–who enjoy killing. That minority may be small, but it does not take many enthusiastic killers to trigger the destruction of a fragile society. Revolutions, pogroms, genocides, and civil wars are not made by majorities, but by minorities with the acquiescence of the majority. The majority may gloat, or loot, but the killing minority drives history.

Violence is addictive. Police know this. That’s where the phrase “the usual suspects” comes from. In our society, the overwhelming majority of violent acts are committed by repeat offenders. Statistics would make us a violent nation; in fact, we are a peaceable people until aroused. The numbers are skewed because we have failed to deter recidivists. Spouse- and child-abusers do not do it once, they repeat. Sex offenders–and all sex crimes are crimes of violence–are notorious repeat offenders. Most barroom brawls are begun by the same old troublemakers.

Even in combat, when mortal violence is legal, most enemy combatants killed in close fighting appear to be killed by a small number of “high performers” in our ranks. Throughout history, many a combat hero has had difficulty adjusting to peace. We reject the evidence of the human enthusiasm for violence because it troubles us and undercuts the image we have created of perfectible Man. But violence has an undeniable appeal. Certainly for the otherwise disenfranchised, it is the only response left. Perhaps the psychologists are right that much violence is a cry for help. But what both of those arguments really say is that violence, however motivated, is gratifying and empowering.

THE POWER OF HATRED

The rest of the world is not like us.

For all of our lingering prejudices, we have done a remarkable job of subduing our hatreds. Perhaps it is only the effect of wealth bounded by law that makes us such a powerful exception to history, but our lack of domestic faction is a miracle nonetheless. We are indescribably fortunate, but our good fortune has lulled us into our primary military and diplomatic weakness: we do not understand the delicious appeal of hatred.

We cannot understand how Serbs and Kosovar Albanians, Croats and Bosnian Muslims could do that to each other. We cannot understand how Hutus and Tutsis could do that to each other. We do not understand how the Chinese could do that to the Tibetans. We do not understand how the Armenians and Azeris could do that to each other. We do not understand how the tribes of Sierra Leone or Liberia could do that to each other. We do not understand how India’s Hindus and Muslims could do that to each other. We do not understand how the Russians and Chechens could do that to each other. We do not understand how Haitians, Somalis, Colombians, Mexicans, Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Congolese, Burundians, or Irish could do that to each other . . . .

Over the years, I have written about “warriors”–the non-soldiers from guerrillas to narco-traffickers–whom we encounter and fight. In the past I stressed the importance of recognizing five types of warriors: the scum of the earth, the average Joe who is drawn into the conflict as it drags on, demobilized military men, opportunists, and true believers. Now I worry about only two of these sources of conflict: the opportunists and the believers, the gangsters and the godly, the men unrestrained by morals and those whose iron morality is implacable. They are the centers of gravity. The others are swept along by the tide.

Our enemies of the future will be enemies out of the past. As the US armed forces put their faith and funding behind ever more sophisticated combat systems designed to remove human contact from warfare, mankind circles back to the misbehaviors of yesteryear.

Technologies come and go, but the primitive endures.

For the complete essay, Our New Old Enemies, by Col. Ralph Peters, go here.

THE WHERE’S WALDO PRESIDENCY

AMERICAN FOREIGN  POLICY IS RUDDERLESS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

North Korea, at once the most heavily armed and least stable country in the world, tears up the 1953 Armistice with its democratic (American ally) to the south. This, following years of military and political provocations; including the sinking a South Korean naval vessel by a North Korean submarine in March of 2010. While its hard to take seriously a nation led by a twenty-something dictator who resembles a demented panda bear and pals around with Dennis Rodman; the communist dictatorship has nuclear weapons, is developing a missile capable of hitting Los Angeles, and has in the last few weeks released videos promising to nuke America!

What was President Obama’s strong response to all this?

In Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11 last year,  militants with links to al Qaeda attacked the American Consulate. During an 8 hour siege, five Americans were killed; including Ambassador Chris Stevens, the first of our Ambassadors to be so murdered in decades.

What, again, was the President’s response?

China routinely makes cyber attacks upon our military and civilian computers, hacking and stealing information; some of which has deep national security implications (such as our Top Secret military technology). This, while they have launching their first aircraft carrier as the start of their goal of building a “Blue Water” navy; and are unilaterally seizing disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Just what is the President doing in response to Chinese provocations?

In February two Russian bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, flew into American airspace and over the Island of Guam. They withdrew before scrambled American jet

fighters could intercept them. This is widely seen as another example of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin reasserting his country’s global power and traditional confrontational stance toward the United States.

So much for Hillary Clinton’s famous “restart” of relations between Russian and America. What Putin seems intent on restarting is the Cold War!

Again, the question is: Where is Obama?

The answer in all these cases is that the Administration’s response was to have no response.

It seems that the Obama administration’s answer to difficult foreign policy challenges is to largely ignore them and hope they go unnoticed.  Its an ostrich strategy: burying ones head in the sand, refusing to look at a threat rather than dealing with it.

As the Middle East burns and Asia smolders Americans wonder where is the President. Foreign policy in the Obama Age seems rudderless, as the President spends his time playing golf and politics rather than his job as Commander in Chief and Leader of the Free World. In his second term it is increasingly a “Where’s Waldo” presidency, with Obama nowhere to be seen on foreign policy.

As Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was already noting in his first term, Obama the lion of the campaign trail seems a tame housecat on the world stage.

‘For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action – unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.’

Its an increasingly dangerous world for America and her friends. Made more dangerous do to a lack of American leadership.

Al Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups have spread violence from the Philippine Islands to sub-Saharan Africa (and, thanks largely to the late unlamented Hugo Chavez, Hezbollah has set up training camps in South America as well). In Mali, Al Qaeda was well on the way to taking over that country, having already established its own government in the northern part. In absence of American action, it took the French (!) to finally intervene in order to prevent such a disastrous contingency.

Egypt, the most populous Arab country in the world, has been taken over by the radical Muslim Brotherhood, the intellectual father of Al Qaeda. It has all but torn-up the Camp David Accords that brought peace with Israel; cutting off normal relations while its President, Mohammed Morsi, calls the Israelis (and Jews in general) “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” Meanwhile, in the streets of Cairo mobs attack our embassy, burning our flag while Morsi does nothing.

President Obama’s response?

To cut off (or threaten to cut off) foreign aid to Egypt? No. To recall our Ambassador in protest? No. Waldo’s government took the bold step of giving the Egyptians 20 of our top fighter jets, as well as 200 of our all-but-unstoppable M-1 Abrams super-tanks!

Bet that makes our Israeli allies feel more secure.

Syria has become a killing field, with Iran and Russia supporting the bloody dictator, Assad, while the Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates support the insurgents. This is part of the larger bid by Iran for hegemony in the Middle East, as well as our “restarted” friend Vladimir’s attempt to make Russia again relevant in the region (something it hasn’t been since the fall of the Soviet Union).

Speaking of Iran, the clock is ticking down as it grows ever closer to building its first nuclear weapon. It already has missiles capable of hitting Israel, which it has promised to destroy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned repeatedly that when Iran’s bomb is on the verge of going critical, Israel will act; with or without America.

So, where’s Waldo?

Playing golf with Tiger.

It is ironic that a man who campaigned so hard and successfully to be President of the United States doesn’t seem to really want the job. That a guy who is now Commander in Chief of the world’s mightiest military only wants to disband it and make war on Republicans.

Second terms are notoriously tricky for all Presidents, who loose relevance as their time in the White House runs down and they become lame ducks. This is the first President in my memory who has made himself irrelevant, on the world stage, by the end of his first term. By “leading from behind”, Obama has made America irrelevant.

THE AUDACITY OF DECEIT

In 2006, then Senator Barack Obama’s memoir, “The Audacity of Hope” was a bestseller. Perhaps now-President Obama should release a new book, recounting his masterful demagoguing of the sequestration debate. He could title it, “The Audacity of Deceit”!

What can one say about a President who first proposes and signs into law an across the board spending cut proposal, called sequestration,  to be triggered only if the Congressional Supercommittee could not reach agreement on necessary spending cuts; and then, when his proposal becomes reality, not only denies he had any part in its creation but blames it on the Republicans, using it as a club to beat them with?

His admirers call it political genius. I call it demagogic chutzpah.

As Bob Woodward (aka, White House Public Enemy Number One) clearly documented in his reporting on the issue, the proposal for “draconian” sequestration cuts to the grossly bloated Federal budget originated in the White House; not among the Republicans, as Obama now would have the ill-informed believe.

What makes this particularly audacious is that the President who now decries the severe effect these cuts will likely have is the same man who in November derailed GOP attempts to get rid of the sequester by threatening to veto any such bill if it came to his desk.

“There will be no easy off-ramps on this one. We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure,” the president said on November 21, 2012.

There was, of course, no “compromise” offered by either the President or the Democrats in the Senate. A compromise means giving the other guy some of what he wants, so that you can get some (but not all) of what you want. The Dems demanded to have it all their own way, with additional tax raises with none of the (necessary) spending cuts Republicans were expecting. (Expecting, because after they gave in to the President’s demands for tax raises at the end of the “Fiscal Cliff” debate they were led to believe the President was serious about compromise and a “balanced approached”; and the that now it was the Democrats turn to give in on spending cuts.)

Are we to believe that having forced the sequester cuts to become reality by threatening to veto any measure that would have stopped the sequester, Obama now has no culpability in its effects?

Now that the sequestration has gone through, the President and his people rush to the “bully pulpit” to decry the very mechanism he put in place. Worse, they paint a totally false picture of just how severe the effects of such cuts really will be.

If these are what modern America calls “draconian”, then long-dead Draco must be shaking his head in disgust within his now-lost grave!

These cuts represent a reduction of about one week’s spending by the Federal government. Yes, that’s right: a single week. These “draconian” reductions are only about 2-3 percent of the budget; spread over 10 years! If the fat-laden Federal budget can’t be reduced by a miserly 3%, and that cut only to proposed growth (the dirty-little-poorly-kept secret is that this is only a cut to the growth in spending, not to the actual budget itself; the Federal budget and our National Debt will still continue to balloon)… Well, ladies and gentleman, turn out the lights now: we are truly doomed to bankruptcy.

In the face of dire “the sky is falling” predictions by the President and spokespersons for his Administration, Republicans in Congress offered a bill that would give the President complete authority to take the spending cuts out of the “fat” in the budget (such as “team building” vacations by highly paid bureaucrats to places like Hawaii at the tax payer’s expense); instead of to vital or popular services (such as White House tours).

What was Obama’s response?

Not just no, but HELL NO! Again, the President threatened to veto such authority if Congress tried to give it to him.

No way the President wanted the buck to stop at his desk! That would have made blaming the Republicans in Congress all the harder.

But I digress.

That Obama can describe the horrors of sequestration with a straight face is laughable. Especially as now, after the event has come to pass, we see report-after-report contradicting the dire warnings of the Administration.

Long lines at the airports? Nope, not happening. Airports are reporting wait-time at normal, pre-sequestration rates.

Teachers being furloughed? This claim is especially deceitful on the face of it: teachers (like policemen, firemen, and other First Responders)  are not Federal workers. They are not paid from nor affected by (in any significant way) reductions to the Federal budget!

But truth has always been fungible to this President; who relies on a gullible public not to catch such subtleties, and a lap-dog press who won’t hold him accountable for such dishonesty.

What is really going on here is like Lucy and Charlie Brown: Lucy (Obama) holds the football for Charlie Brown to kick. Trusting fool, he once again falls for it; running forward to kick the ball. Once again, as always, Lucy pulls the ball back at the last minute; and Charlie Brown ends up falling on his ass!

When they accepted the President’s sequestration proposal, the Republicans once again fell for it. They forgot that they are dealing with a master of deceit.

A demagogue of breathtaking audacity.

THE TOWN OF ALLOPATH: AN ALLEGORY FOR OUR TIMES

An interesting and amusing allegory for our society today, produced by the controversial Dr. Joseph M. Mercola.