And there’s not a thing anyone can do. So this is where we are now at:
A senior Israeli official confirmed to Israeli media that the US had suspended a shipment of Hellfire missiles to Israel amid worsening ties over fighting in Gaza.
Now why would they do that unless they wanted Israel to lose? For more along the same lines, see this.
BARACK OBAMA ON PRESIDENTIAL VACATIONS IN 2008: “You have to understand that if you seek that office, then you have to be prepared to give your life to it. Essentially, the bargain that I think every President strikes with the American people is, ‘you give me this office, then in turn my fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure, is gone. I am giving myself to you.’”
A liar at every turn but not a scandal because although he may be a liar he’s the media’s liar (as in, he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard).
Both from Instapundit.
Is Obama clueless or is he wilfully destructive. My personal view is that he has set out to sabotage the US but he may just be dumb and ignorant. Sometimes, though, he puts his finger right on the problem even though he doesn’t know what problem exactly that is. Here’s a quote from him in a story where he’s complaining about how the media is so against him that he can’t get anything done.
We need to rebuild our infrastructure. You go to the Singapore airport and then you come back to one of our airports and you say, huh? We’re not acting like a superpower.
He has so distorted the direction of expenditure and investment in the US (see Solyndra, GM etc) that resources have been poured into so many non-value-adding forms of expenditure that the US is buckling at the knees. It will soon be a poor country. It is running down its capital (and by this I means its capital stock, not money) with little being done to maintain what already exists, that in no time at all the real standard of living will cascade down. Singapore is not run by socialists, the United States is.
From Coming Out as Pro-Israel on Facebook by Danusha V. Goska:
Anti-Israel voices are exploiting and in a perverse way celebrating human suffering in Gaza, because publicly bemoaning that suffering gives them the opportunity to play at being humanitarian while not actually doing anything, and to say nasty things about Jews while dodging censure.
A long article well worth the read.
It’s not as if everyone doesn’t know. It’s not the fear of speaking truth to power, it is the certain knowledge that pointing out the facts will have the media attack you as viciously as it can. Michele Bachmann tried to do what she could but who even amongst her own colleagues was willing to put their political future on the line. Still what Horowitz says is the truth, but saying it to us at National Review Online makes no difference of any kind to the way the world continues to evolve:
Barack Obama deliberately set out to lose the war in Iraq, and he did. He defied the advice of his joint chiefs of staff to secure America’s formidable military presence and keep 20,000 troops in country, and left Iraq to its own devices and the tender mercies of Iran. In doing so, he betrayed every American and Iraqi who gave his life to create a free Iraq and keep it out of the clutches of the terrorists.
Iraq is now a war zone dominated by the terrorist forces of the Islamic State, whose rise Obama’s policies fostered. Both his secretaries of state praised the animal Bashar Assad as a “reformer” and a man of “peace,” helping him to thwart his domestic opposition. The Islamic State was born out of the Syrian chaos that ensued.
Far worse was Obama’s open support for America’s mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, spawner of al-Qaeda and Hamas. During the “Arab Spring,” Obama essentially put America’s weight behind the legitimization of this murderous organization that had been outlawed for 40 years for its assassinations and conspiracies against the Egyptian regime. Secretary of State Clinton gave totally unfounded assurances to the world that the Brotherhood was ready to become part of the democratic process and give up its 90-year holy war against infidels, Jews in particular but also — and explicitly — America. During the Brotherhood’s brief tenure as the government in Egypt Obama gave these genocidal zealots more than a billion dollars in American aid and F-16 fighter-bombers that could easily reach Israel’s major population centers, which for 60 years the Brotherhood had sworn to destroy.
The word Horowitz then uses to describe Obama is “feckless”. Spare me. What a pathetic useless word. How weak and insipid! The right word is traitorous. Obama’s sympathies are with those who would wish to tear down Western civilisation. But unsayable and therefore unsaid even by David Horowitz.
This is what the most clueless and unfit President in American history said today:
“I know that many of you are rightly concerned about any American military action in Iraq, even limited strikes like these,” he said. “I understand that. I ran for this office in part to end our war in Iraq and welcome our troops home, and that’s what we’ve done. As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.”
If he doesn’t want to fight it in Iraq, he or someone else will have to fight it somewhere else. This is from Diane Feinstein, for goodness sake, Democrat Senator from California:
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday said the extremist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) must be confronted forcefully by the U.S., though she stopped short of calling for boots on the ground.
“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement.
The group is “operating with military expertise, advancing across Iraq and rapidly consolidating its position,” she added.
“Inaction is no longer an option,” according to Feinstein.
The senior lawmaker also said it had “become clear” that the group is recruiting and training fighters from Western countries and possibly sending them back to cities in the U.S. and Europe in order to “attack us in our backyard.”
“We simply cannot allow this to happen,” Feinstein warned.
The descent of the United States is taking so many different forms but economically it is heading down towards the middle of the pack and will fall lower before it even begins to turn around. This story from the Wall Street Journal looks at one aspect of this demise: Why It’s Worrying That U.S. Companies Are Getting Older. The effect of public spending and low rates of interest are not just inflation but also come in the form of a crumbling capital stock. In fact, this decay of capital is more insidious since it is harder to identify but eventually there is no doubting that the process is in place and that it is having a devastating effect.
Meanwhile there is this fully related story although modern economic theory would have trouble seeing how the are connected: $7,060,259,674,497.51–Federal Debt Up $7 Trillion Under Obama. How do you suppose this will eventually work its way out?
As of June, there were 115,097,000 households in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The $17,687,136,723,410.59 in debt the federal government had accumulated as of the end of July equaled $153,671.57 per household.
The $7,060,259,674,497.51 in new debt that the federal government has taken on during Obama’s presidency equals $61,341.82 per household.
An absolute shambles and with no one in charge.
Either the explanation for the following is quite straightforward although extremely sinister, or there is a subtle policy being promoted that no one will understand until its fulfilment in some particular way.
Abbas and the PA continue to insist that any solution to the current crisis be achieved only through Egypt, which is interested in seeing an end to Hamas’ rule over the Gaza Strip.
But the Obama Administration obviously does not share this view. It has chosen a different path — one that would result in keeping Hamas in power and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of moderate, pro-Western Arabs and Muslims.
Palestinian officials in Ramallah made it clear this week that they no longer trust the US Administration because of Kerry’s attempt to “appease” Qatar and Turkey at the expense of the Palestinian Authority and Egypt.
“Someone needs to remind Kerry that Qatar is not the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinians,” said a senior Palestinian official in Ramallah.
Another official, Ahmed Majdalani, warned that the Palestinians and Egyptians wouldn’t allow Kerry to “bypass” their leaders and meddle in the internal affairs of the Palestinian people.
By siding with Qatar and Turkey, the Obama Administration is effectively expressing its opposition to the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the Obama Administration now finds itself on the same side with Iran, which is also vehemently opposed to disarming Hamas.
The obvious explanation is that the American administration sides with Hamas and against America’s allies. Is there another? If there is, no one has been able to say what it is.
It does strike me that Obama would like nothing better than for the Republicans to try to impeach him, not just because it would create a great crusade to keep him President, but mainly just to distract from how colossally bad he has been as president. Narcissistic though he is, even he knows somewhere that he will be remembered as a failure as president and will leave office even more discredited than George Bush. He is in this like Gough Whitlam, for whom the dismissal was the best thing that ever happened to him. It wiped from the collective memory of the nation just how awful his government had been. I have an article at Quadrant Online that compares Obama’s desire for impeachment to Whitlam’s salvation through the dismissal The article begins:
It has always seemed plausible that Gough Whitlam sought his own dismissal in 1975. Overseeing a government that, by then and in virtually every respect, was making an absolute shambles of the economy – rapidly rising unemployment combined with rapidly rising inflation – while being caught up in the preposterous Khemlani Loans Affair, Whitlam’s was a government certain to enter history as amongst the worst, if not the worst, in Australia’s history. Having been dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr and gone before the press to declare, “Well may we say ‘God Save the Queen’, because nothing will save the Governor-General”, he then went home and had a hearty lunch, reportedly in the best possible spirits.
The rest of the article is about Obama and his desire for redemption by following in Whitlam’s steps. The article is found here.
It has always seemed a plausible idea that Gough Whitlam sought his own dismissal in 1975. Overseeing a government that by then in virtually every respect was making economic conditions an absolute shambles – rapidly rising unemployment combined with rapidly rising inflation – while being caught up in the preposterous Khemlani Loans Affair, Whitlam’s was a government that was certain to enter history as amongst the worst if not the worst in Australian history. But having been dismissed by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, and then gone before the press to declare, “Well may we say ‘God Save the Queen’ – because nothing will save the Governor-General”, he then went home and had a hearty lunch, reportedly in the best possible spirits.
Who now thinks of the Whitlam Government in the way it needs to be, as a massive failure, and a failure specifically because of the various aspects of socialist ideology that were the causes of the economic havoc that occurred? Whitlam’s name has been redeemed as a great martyr, rather than as a major political catastrophe.
I now think Obama wishes to take the same approach as Whitlam, to replace his reputation in history as an incompetent fool and see in its place his role as a martyr to impeachment and the forces of the right. That he deserves to be flung from office is obvious. If competence and results were the only issues then he would be. But since the issues would shift from competence to defying democracy, with major discussions of racism as the cause, he won’t be impeached, even though this may be his own dearest wish.
Here is an article that sees Obama in the same light as Whitlam: Obama wants to be impeached. I think myself this is true, not just because even if impeached he would never be removed from office, but because it would raise his standing in the polls. The Democrats could only wish the other side was stupid enough to do it. Although on this occasion no Congressional leader would go near any such action, it may be enough for others merely to raise the possibility for this to achieve its aim. And it does seem to be his aim.
President Obama insists on flirting with impeachment even as House Republican leaders insist there’s no such possibility.
Obama uses a passive-aggressive strategy that can be judged as a political maneuver, a personality disorder, or both.
Secure in the knowledge that impeachment is not the same as removal from office, Mr. Obama brings up the topic on his own and with bold defiance. Martyrdom goes well with a Messiah complex and Mr. Obama’s speeches are a non-stop litany of depicting himself as a victim of Republicans.
This for him would be political gold. Since the process would go on endlessly and divert attention from the more significant issues, it would be an act of political suicide. The article however delves into the psychological underpinnings of Obama’s character to explain his motives in daring others to impeach him:
His behavior matches the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of passive-aggressive behavior, “a habitual pattern of passive resistance to expected work requirements, opposition, stubbornness, and negativistic attitudes in response to requirements for normal performance levels expected of others.” Often, such persons see themselves as blameless victims, projecting fault onto others. Commonly, they follow erratic paths and cause constant conflicts.
Be that as it may, the politics of impeachment are clear. Any such move would help only Obama and the Democrats. Best to leave him where he is, a human wrecking-ball though he is. If after eight years of such governance the American constituency seeks to elect an Obama-clone of some kind, well them’s the facts. In the meantime we out here in the rest of the world will have to work out what to do when America has rolled itself up into an ungovernable socialist ball with little desire to assist its fellow democracies dealing with the various forms of tyranny we see at every turn.
Law of Markets 