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| A young Syrian man kneels blindfolded before anti-regime rebels publicly executed him in the town of Keferghan, near Aleppo, on August 31, 2013. |
The two teenage boys, 16, charged with beating to death Delbert “Shorty” Belton, 88, as he crossed a parking lot at a Washington club entered not guilty pleas on Friday.The judge set the trial for Demetrius Glenn and Kenan Adams-Kinard for November, The Associated Press reported.The teens are being tried as adults in the killing of the World War II veteran outside an Eagles Lodge in Spokane in August. Police said they beat the man to death as he tried to hide in his car, using flashlights and fists and leaving him for dead.
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| One of the perps. |
Google Inc. GOOG -0.35% founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have to dig deeper to operate their fleet of private jets, after the U.S. Department of Defense ended a little-known arrangement that for years allowed the tech billionaires to travel on sharply discounted jet fuel bought from the Pentagon.
AS IOWAHAWK NOTED ON TWITTER, with this September 11th oped in the New York Times deriding the “American exceptionalism” that he invoked last night, Putin is basically just doing doughnuts in Obama’s front yard now.And while there may be some pleasure in seeing Obama’s foreign-relations fecklessness chickens coming home to roost, there’s nothing good about seeing our greatest geopolitical foe putting it to an American President this way. Such are the wages of “smart diplomacy.”Just don’t say we didn’t warn you. . . .
Power complains in her book that when faced with humanitarian catastrophes in the past, American diplomats have said there isn’t much we can do to stop them. Her reply is that we’ve never really tried, never made a serious effort to ascertain what a systematic application of diplomatic and military pressure could achieve on behalf of humanitarian ends. Well, we’ve finally put Power’s policy prescriptions to the test. The consequences have been ascertained, and they are disastrous.If we do strike Syria, it will not stop Assad, and will likely only provoke him further. Moreover, the price we’ve paid for the mere appearance of a humanitarian solution is the near-collapse of our strategic position in the Middle East.A foreign policy that intentionally subordinates traditional calculations of strategic interest to humanitarian ends will inevitably sacrifice our strategic interests. And having lost strategic position, our ability to sustain humanitarian ends, insofar as we can do so consistently with out interests, will be correspondingly reduced. This is what happened in Libya and Syria when we put Power’s policies into practice. So not only are we now facing a substantial reduction of our influence in the Middle East and the rise of Russia in our place, but the Syrians are unlikely to give up their chemical weapons in the end.All of this follows logically from Power’s theories. Move humanitarianism to the center of our foreign policy at the expense of traditional strategic concerns, and strategic disaster follows. In the end, that means more humanitarian problems, not less.
The good news is we're not at war. The bad news is … almost everything else about President Obama's handling of Syria – the fumbling and flip-flopping and marble-mouthing – undercut his credibility, and possibly with it his ability to lead the nation and world.
The president has backed away from a military strike in Syria. But he can’t acknowledge this or act as if it is true. He is acting and talking as if he’s coolly, analytically, even warily contemplating the Russian proposal and the Syrian response. The proposal, he must know, is absurd. ...It will be a White House address in which a president argues for an endeavor he is abandoning. It will be a president appealing for public support for an action he intends not to take.We’ve never had a presidential speech like that!
At 9 p.m. Tuesday, President Obama, in his address to the nation, said that he had “asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force.”This contradicted what his secretary of state, John Kerry, had said in testimony to Congress just 11 hours earlier. “We’re not asking Congress not to vote,” Kerry told the House Armed Services Committee. “I’m not asking [for] delay,” he added later.Kerry can be forgiven for being at odds with the president. The president, in the space of his 16-minute address, was often at odds with himself. He spent the first 12 minutes arguing for the merits of striking Syria — and then delivered the news that he was putting military action on hold.He promised that it would be “a limited strike” without troops on the ground or a long air campaign, yet he argued that it was the sort of blow that “no other nation can deliver.” He argued that “we should not be the world’s policeman” while also saying that because of our “belief in freedom and dignity for all people,” we cannot “look the other way.” He asserted that what Bashar al-Assad did is “a danger to our security” while also saying that “the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military.”
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama voiced his conviction Tuesday night that Syrian President Bashar Assad was to blame for deadly chemical attacks against civilians, but again he offered no proof.A look at his remarks to the nation, seeking support for a military strike against Syria, and how they compare with the facts as publicly known:OBAMA: "We know the Assad regime was responsible. ... The facts cannot be denied."THE FACTS: The Obama administration has not laid out proof Assad was behind the attack.The administration has cited satellite imagery and communications intercepts, backed by social media and intelligence reports from sources in Syria, as the basis for blaming the Assad government. But the only evidence the administration has made public is a collection of videos it has verified of the victims. The videos do not demonstrate who launched the attacks.Administration officials have not shared the satellite imagery they say shows rockets and artillery fire leaving government-held areas and landing in 12 rebel-held neighborhoods outside Damascus where chemical attacks were reported. Nor have they shared transcripts of the Syrian officials allegedly warning units to ready gas masks or discussing how to handle U.N. investigators after it happened.The White House has declined to explain where it came up with the figure of at least 1,429 dead, including 400 children - a figure far higher than estimates by nongovernmental agencies such as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has counted only victims identified by name, with a current total of 502. In his remarks, Obama more generally accused Assad's forces of gassing to death "over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children."
On Tuesday, as the Obama administration ramped up its lobbying on Capitol Hill, Sen. Rand Paul convened a group of some 30 lawmakers skeptical of a military intervention in Syria. The group -- which included Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN) and two dozen others -- discussed different strategies for staving off a military intervention and the desire to call off a vote to authorize military force."I think everybody is hopeful that putting the vote on a permanent hold would be the best route forward," Paul said in an interview with The Cable.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton has been in this spot before.As a senator in 2002, she endorsed military action in Iraq, a decision that came back to haunt her in her failed White House bid six years later.Now, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate is risking the possibility of a similar political situation in a future campaign with her support of President Barack Obama's call for a U.S.-led military strike in Syria as punishment for the use of chemical weapons.
AFP - Russian President Vladimir Putin will offer to supply Iran S-300 air defence missile systems as well as build a second reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, the Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday.
COLORADO SPRINGS — Two Colorado Democrats who provided crucial support for a slate of tough new gun-control laws were voted out of office on Tuesday in a recall vote widely seen as a test of popular support for gun restrictions after mass shootings in a Colorado movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.
While both sides campaigned vigorously, knocking on doors, holding rallies and driving voters to the polls, gun-control advocates far outspent their opponents. A range of philanthropists, liberal political groups, unions and activists raised a total of $3 million to defend Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron. Mr. Bloomberg personally gave $350,000.
The recall elections ousted two Democratic state senators, John Morse and Angela Giron, and replaced them with Republicans. Both defeats were painful for Democrats – Mr. Morse’s because he had been Senate president, and Ms. Giron’s because she represented a heavily Democratic, working-class slice of southern Colorado.
Last night, President Barack Obama, who, just over a week ago, had said he was ready to act, tells the nation's cable watchers that he's now discussing this bogus plan with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that he's "going to take this very seriously" while also not letting up on the drumbeat of military strikes while. On Tuesday, Syria said it had accepted Russia's proposal and France said it would seek the UN Security Council's backing for the proposal.This, in other words, is no light at the end of the tunnel. This, to borrow a phrase from a Congressional staffer at his wits' end, "is an unmitigated clusterfuck."
Event Staff at the US special mission in Benghazi woke on 11 September to the sight of a Libyan policeman, deployed to guard them, filming the compound from a neighbouring rooftop. When challenged, he vanished. Later, an unmarked car made lazy circles around the compound, a walled redoubt rented in the southern suburbs of the Libyan city.US version The state department says there were no warning of impending attack, a spokesman insisting there was "nothing unusual during the day at all".Conflicting evidence Two days earlier, the ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, had received a veiled warning. According to one of his cables, one of his diplomats had a meeting with two Islamist militia leaders in which they complained that the US was supporting a secular leader, Mahmoud Jibril, in a vote for prime minister due on 12 September. If Jibril won, they warned, they would "no longer guarantee security". The consulate was already relying on one of the militias, the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, for armed protection.In the words of a subsequent report by the US Senate's homeland security committee, warning lights were "flashing red". As the day went on, news came in of attacks by radicals on the US embassy in Cairo, a response to a film, the Innocence of Muslims, released in America which mocked Muhammad. The CIA sent a cable to its foreign stations warning of possible copycat incidents.The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks also preyed on the minds of compound staff in Benghazi. In a letter found in the ruins by the Guardian, Stevens wrote: "For security reasons, we'll need to be careful about limiting moves off compound and scheduling as many meetings as possible in the villa."At least one man inside the compound was anxious. Sean Smith, a 34-year-old information management officer accompanying the ambassador on the visit, emailed a friend: "Assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures." Hours later, he was dead.
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| Glacier National Park |
BERLIN — Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.
Tomorrow night, President Barack Obama will address the nation on the subject of Syria and its alleged use of chemical weapons. He intends to use the credibility inherent in the presidency to persuade a skeptical nation that military strikes on Syria are necessary.But he has a major credibility problem. Four years ago today — September 9, 2009 — President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress. Presidents typically reserve addresses to joint sessions of Congress for weighty matters. National crises. War and peace.Obama used that joint session address to speak on the “crisis” of health care.During that speech, he told America ... [the following lies]
Summing up the net effect of all this [Obama's Syrian pratfall], as astute a foreign observer as Conrad Black can flatly say that, "Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States."Yet if this is indeed the pass to which Mr. Obama has led us—and I think it is—let me suggest that it signifies not how incompetent and amateurish the president is, but how skillful. His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it.The key to understanding what Mr. Obama has pulled off is the astonishing statement he made in the week before being elected president: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." To those of us who took this declaration seriously, it meant that Mr. Obama really was the left-wing radical he seemed to be, given his associations with the likes of the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not to mention the intellectual influence over him of Saul Alinsky, the original "community organizer."
This he did by camouflaging his retreats from the responsibilities bred by foreign entanglements as a new form of "engagement." ... "leading from behind" ....The consequent erosion of American power was going very nicely when the unfortunately named Arab Spring presented the president with several juicy opportunities to speed up the process. First in Egypt, his incoherent moves resulted in a complete loss of American influence, and now, thanks to his handling of the Syrian crisis, he is bringing about a greater diminution of American power than he probably envisaged even in his wildest radical dreams.For this fulfillment of his dearest political wishes, Mr. Obama is evidently willing to pay the price of a sullied reputation. In that sense, he is by his own lights sacrificing himself for what he imagines is the good of the nation of which he is the president, and also to the benefit of the world, of which he loves proclaiming himself a citizen.
The economy: During Obama’s first term, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded by S&P for the first time in history. [and] ... According to a report released in 2012 by the Federal Reserve, Americans have seen their wealth plummet by 40 percent over the past few years.Race relations: They are in a rawer state than I can remember thanks to a president who played the race card at every opportunity. The Cambridge police were “stupid,” according to the president, in the way they handled the case of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., famous Harvard huckster, back in 2009. If he had had a son, said the president, he would “look like” the thug Trayvon Martin, who jumped George Zimmerman and was shot dead by Zimmerman while pounding his head into the concrete sidewalk.And then there’s the position of the United States on the world stage. ... “Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991,” the historian Conrad Black observed yesterday, “and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.”...
For the America-hating, transnational progressive Left, the disaster that is Obama must have been fun at first: warm and fuzzy speeches in Cairo about how, deep down, Islam is as American as apple pie, economically suicidal decisions like the veto of the Keystone pipeline, unleashing the Internal Revenue Service against groups that promoted things like patriotism or the tea party: wot larks! ... The long march through the institutions of bourgeois capitalism is an amusing trek so long as you are the one giving the marching orders and commanding the funds and the security to make sure that, if there is any rough stuff, you are well out of it. But when that changes? If there is a tune everyone will remember from the Obama administration, it will the percussive sound of scurrying feet, rodent feet hurrying to get off the ship.So stayed tuned. Obama drew (or didn’t draw: depends when you ask him) a “red line” about Syria: ... Meanwhile, alas, Michael Morell, deputy director of the CIA, recently said that toppling Assad would be the biggest threat in the world to U.S. security. All those weapons, all those al-Qaeda groups: a bad mixture. Scurry, scurry, scurry. “I don’t remember a time,” said Morell, “when there have been so many national security issues on the front burner as there are today.” Thank goodness we have John “reporting for duty” Kerry and Barack Obama handling things. Feeling better?
-Oh-oh! As reported by both leftist and righteous on-line sources, Syrian rebels have admitted to using chemical weapons in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden’s directive to kill women and children.
A video has emerged of an opposition rebel militant in Syria apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.The individual in the clip, Nadeem Baloosh, is a member of an insurgent group called Riyadh Al Abdeen, which is active in the Latakia area of Syria.Baloosh speaks of “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess,” before going on to state, “We decided to harm them through their women and kids.”
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| An Army of Clowns: Harry, Gibbsy, JJ, Jean Carré, Big Guy, Axe-man and Joey |
By all accounts, even the highly regarded John F. Kennedy, who was pretty green at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, sought advice from those with more military experience than himself. He clandestinely consulted with Dwight D. Eisenhower to gain insight and perspective on how best to proceed with the deathly serious situation of Russian nuclear warheads headed for Cuba. Eisenhower coached the young President thorough the negotiations and mechanics of the Cuban blockade. At one point Kennedy seemed to waver, asking his mentor, “but what do I do if the Russians call my bluff?” To which Eisenhower replied, “You’re not bluffing, John.”
Japan’s nuclear watchdog has now declared the leak of radioactive water from Fukushima a “state of emergency.” Each day, 300 tons of radioactive water seeps into the ocean, and it’s now clear that TEPCO has engage [sic] in a two-and-a-half-year cover-up of immense magnitude.Just how out of control is the situation at Fukushima? It’s so out of control that TEPCO recently had to admit 10 of its workers were somehow — yeah, see if you can figure this out — sprayed with highly radioactive water while waiting for a bus.“The workers’ exposure above the neck was found to be as much as 10 becquerels per square centimeter,” reports Bloomberg.comHow exactly did highly radioactive water manage to find its way to a bus stop in the first place?
Since you went back and re-read that 2011 post when I linked it (you didn’t? But what if there’s a quiz?) you’ll recall that there is a somewhat-joking unit called the banana equivalent. Bananas, like everything else, are slightly radioactive by nature, and in fact it turns out that since bananas concentrate potassium, they’re a little more radioactive than a lot of other things. So, a banana equivalent amount of radioactivity is something that has about the same number of decays per second as a banana does. So what’s the banana-equivalent in Bq?A normal-sized 150g banana produces about 20 Bq.So, the “highly radioactive water”? It’s roughly equivalent in radiation danger to coating yourself in banana pudding.
| The Psalms |
| 91 |
Abiding in the Shadow of the Almighty | |||||
| 1 | He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High
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| 2 | I will say of the LORD,
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| 3 | Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,
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| 4 | He shall cover thee with his feathers,
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| 5 | Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
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| 6 | nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;
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| 7 | A thousand shall fall at thy side,
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| 8 | Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold
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| 9 | Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge,
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| 10 | there shall no evil befall thee,
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| 11 | For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
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| 12 | They shall bear thee up in their hands,
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| 13 | Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:
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| 14 | Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:
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| 15 | He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:
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| 16 | With long life will I satisfy him,
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And to begin a war when in all appearances at a low ebb is to court disaster. You should ideally be in possession of all your marbles at the start of something like that. But Obama has reached the sorry stage of dejection that only the most soundly defeated generals experience when they looked down at a shrunken position. He is whupped. He’s Gamelin before Rundstedt. He’s Perceval marching in his shorts in a toothbrush mustache to a grinning Yamashita in his two-toned Imperial Japanese Army uniform.
SYDNEY/CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's conservative leader Tony Abbott swept into office in national elections on Saturday as voters punished the outgoing Labor government for six years of turbulent rule and for failing to maximize the benefits of a now fading mining boom.Abbott, a former boxer, Rhodes scholar and trainee priest, promised to restore political stability, cut taxes and crack down on asylum seekers arriving by boat."From today I declare that Australia is under new management and Australia is once more open for business," Abbott told jubilant supporters in Sydney.
With the United States threatening to attack Syria, U.S. and allied intelligence services are still trying to work out who ordered the poison gas attack on rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus.No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward.While U.S. officials say Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons strike even if he did not directly order it, they have not been able to fully describe a chain of command for the August 21 attack in the Ghouta area east of the Syrian capital.It is one of the biggest gaps in U.S. understanding of the incident, even as Congress debates whether to launch limited strikes on Assad's forces in retaliation.
Another reason some Hollywood progressives have been reticent to speak out against war in Syria, according to Asner, is fear of being called racist."A lot of people don't want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama," he said.
In 2003, ahead of a U.S. attack on Iraq, a robust anti-war movement in Hollywood included a TV commercial starring Martin Sheen and Sean Penn visiting Baghdad. There were online petitions signed by Ed Asner; letters to President George W. Bush pleading for peace were signed by Matt Damon, Tim Robbins, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin; former M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell fronted multiple press conferences where celebrities denounced war. In interviews, Janeane Garofalo stopped identifying herself as an actor -- she preferred to be called a member of the U.S. anti-war movement.The good news for President Barack Obama as he considers a military response against Syria for using chemical weapons against rebels is that he probably won't have to deal with a similar anti-war movement from Hollywood. But that's not because there isn't opposition. It's just not organized, and, as Asner and Farrell – two of the industry's most vocal progressive activists -- told The Hollywood Reporter Friday, perhaps it never will be.
Pope Francis has written a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, host of the G-20 summit that President Obama is attending, urging world leaders to oppose a military intervention in Syria.
Babbitt was minding his own business as he walked though the crowd near the chess boards in Union Square when a man made a hateful announcement and began his rampage, witnesses said.“He said ‘the next white person who walks by I’m going to [expletive],’” one woman said. “His fist went in and the man’s head bobbed and he hit the ground and you could hear his skull hitting the ground.”The man continued his rampage before demanding to see police officers.“He stood there and hit two more people and asked for the police to come,” Michael Benson said.Stunned witnesses counted a total of three people attacked. The suspect, Lashawn Marten, 31, remained at the scene until police arrived.Babbitt was on the ground with blood flowing from his head. Nearby were two other victims icing their faces.
The fierce watchdogs of the press, confronted with this brazen falsehood, show themselves once again to be Obama's pet hamsters. Instead of giving a "pants on fire" rating, PolitiFact.com's Jon Greenberg claims Obama was "reframing comments rather than denying them." Greenberg can't even say the statement is half true, so he withholds a rating altogether. Peter Baker of the New York Times has his own euphemisms, writing that Obama was "citing longstanding international norms" and "trying to break out of his isolation." The funniest dodges come from Shawna Thomas of NBC News, who on Twitter calls Obama's whopper "a definite change in tone" and an attempt "to unilaterally widen the circle of responsibility."That last one is priceless. Next time someone accuses you of trying to weasel out of a commitment, say you're just trying to widen the circle of responsibility.
A professor at Michigan State University (MSU) opened the first day of his creative writing class on Thursday by bashing Mitt and Ann Romney and ranting against “old Republicans” who he says “raped” the country, according to a student who made a secret recording of the class.The eight-minute secretly recorded video also reveals Prof. William S. Penn bullying a student who apparently disagreed with his Democratic politics and arguing that Republicans want to prevent "black people" from voting.
This only became news because Professor Penn’s psychological brutality was so clumsy and was caught on video. And most students never even notice the indoctrination in college because they have already been indoctrinated through 13 years of public schools.
In White-liberal white-baiting link-baiting gone wild you mentioned this:
Make an outlandish statement about White people.
Watch White people react in denial.
Use denial reaction as proof you were right all along.
There’s a word for this logical Fallacy. It’s called Kafkatrapping.
In short it takes the form of using denial of guilt as proof of guilt. Here’s the blog that explains it very well.
I think the term should be used more widely.
President Obama told reporters in Sweden Wednesday that he never “set a red line” when it came to deciding to intervene militarily in Syria.That claim directly contradicts Obama’s remarks in August of last year, when he announced his “red line” for action in Syria during a White House press conference.
The Israeli Air force is five minutes from Damascus, its army a two-day march. The Turks have three times Syria’s population and a 400,000-man army equipped with NATO weapons. Together, they could invade and turn the tide in a week. Why do they not man up?
"American power ... wielded so ineptly ..."
Mr. Castro, 53, was found hanging in his cell at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, OhioA fitting end.
Well, let's support a non-objective.Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey couldn’t answer what exactly the U.S. was seeking in Syria Tuesday during questioning from Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) about a resolution authorizing military action there:DEMPSEY: The answer to whether I support additional support for the moderate opposition is yes.CORKER: And this authorization will support those activities in addition to responding to the weapons of mass destruction.DEMPSEY: I don’t know how the resolution will evolve, but I support –CORKER: What you’re seeking. What is it you’re seeking?DEMPSEY: I can’t answer that, what we’re seeking.
WASHINGTON – The turmoil that was generated between Russia and the United States after President Vladimir Putin granted asylum to Edward Snowden last month escalated even further when President Obama cancelled his private meeting with the Russian president before September’s G-20 conference of world economic leaders in St. Petersburg. But the delicate fragments of alliance that remained between the two countries may have been irretrievably shredded in the proverbial fan today after Vladimir Putin unfriended President Obama on his Facebook page.
REPORTER: Mr. Vice President, are you saying that some of the rumors about Mrs. Clinton …JOE BIDEN: Let me just stop you right there and state unequivocally, I have no doubt whatsoever that Hillary truly enjoys the company of men. Let’s just nip any kind of tawdry rumors about Hillary Clinton’s personal life in the bud right now. Heck, if you want to know what kind of person Hillary Clinton is, ask her good friend Janet Napolitano. She’ll vouch for her in a heartbeat.REPORTER: Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?JOE BIDEN: Without a doubt. And I assure you that these latest rumors about Hillary and Bill squandering tens of millions of dollars of their charity donations on luxury travel expenses will be proven false. They’ll justifiably evaporate in the same manner that Whitewater, Vince Foster, Benghazi and the seemingly endless array of baseless scandals have over the years. There’s absolutely no reason to go dredging them up again.
This is precisely why a president and not the legislative branch has primary responsibility for foreign policy and directing our military. Once complex military plans with all sorts of geopolitical ramifications hit the “people’s representatives,” their politics drive the debate. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) charged the president with abdicating his responsibility. He’s right in large part.
But ironically, Obama has further weakened his standing and handed Congress an enormous amount of power at a time when he is asserting he can go around Congress and act on domestic matters usually within Congress’s domain.
The reaction when I touched base with GOP offices over the weekend was two-fold. First, they have no idea how the vote will come out. And two, asked to characterize the president’s move, the overwhelming response to the flip-flopping and dithering was “weak.”
