The White House says that Republican wins in two governors’ races were not referendums on the president.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to work through “very local issues that didn’t involve the president.” The presidential spokesman said voters were concerned about the economy.
“I don’t think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion,” Gibbs said.
Hundreds of tons of weaponry, ten times the size of the Karine A shipment of 2002, were seized in an overnight raid Tuesday by the Israeli navy, some 100 nautical miles west of Israel, officials said. The ship seized was sailing under an Antiguan flag.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says…
Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.
Since late this summer General Stanley McChrystal has been asking for more troops for Afghanistan lest we lose the war. Early last month those sentiments were expressed in a formal request for 40,000 additional troops. General Patraeus and Secretary of Defense Gates have publicly endorsed Gen. McChrystal’s request.
Since that time you have been considering whether or not to provide those troops and whether or not the use of those troops in a counter-insurgency strategy — similar to that employed in Iraq — is wise or not. If press reports are to be believed, then top members of your administration have serious doubts as to whether or not the strategy as outlined by Gen. McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. Patraeus and Sec. Gates will work.
Your inaction on this request speaks volumes and one can only draw one logical inference from it: you do not trust the judgment of Gen. Patraeus, Sec. Gates, or Gen. McChrystal.
If you trusted their expertise, then you would have immediately begun to implement their strategy.
Since it is glaringly obvious that you do not trust the judgment of your top commanders in the field or of your own Sec. of Defense, then why don’t you fire them?
If they are so wrong, then they should be fired.
Personally, I don’t think Obama has the stones in his shorts to fire anyone (his wife on the other hand…).
Obama has never had to do anything truly important that included personal responsibility and risk, that is why he is unable to make decisions.
It’s ‘Petraeus’ just in case your internal spellcheck rang.
As a military brat, a Marine, and a civilian I have always distrusted the Democrat Party and their values.
Once again, they prove just how f’d up their priorities are:
Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama’s top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup asked people this question: “Which of the following should be Barack Obama’s top priority as president — the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else…?”
The numbers help explain Obama’s slowness in reaching a decision on what to do in Afghanistan. There simply aren’t very many people in the president’s party who believe the war should be his top priority — just half as many as those who say health care should be his top concern. When it comes to pressure for a decision coming from his own party, there just isn’t much.
When I see numbers like that I don’t see an explanation of Obama’s slowness. I see their attitude towards our military, their sacrifices and the what they really believe when it comes to helping others.
The strange disparity between the heavy-handed community organization at home and the ever cockier untouchables abroad risks making the commander in chief look like a weenie – like “President Pantywaist,” as Britain’s Daily Telegraph has taken to calling him.
The Chicago way? Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight? In Iran, this administration won’t bring a knife to a nuke fight. In Eastern Europe, it won’t bring missile defense to a nuke fight. In Sudan, it won’t bring a knife to a machete fight.
Suppose this year’s Nobel Peace Prize had gone to the scores of Iranians now on trial for having protested the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June. For the three defendants who were sentenced to death over the weekend, a Nobel might have made all the difference in the nick of time. At a minimum, it could have validated their struggle.
Our friends in Oslo had a different idea, which means that the fate of the three defendants—known officially by their initials M.Z., A.P. and N.A.—are at the mercy of Iran’s appellate and supreme courts. It’s a slender hope in a country that is the leading executioner of juveniles, and whose leaders have only become more truculent toward dissenters since the election.
Hope is also slender because the Obama Administration has downplayed human rights in Iran as it pursues a negotiated nuclear settlement with the Ahmadinejad government. Without explanation, the State Department this month pulled funding for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a New Haven, Connecticut outfit that has been investigating the plight of those Iranians now in the dock, including Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh and Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari.
In his Rose Garden remarks about the Nobel, President Obama spoke about “the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets.” The elliptical reference is almost certainly to 27-year old Neda Agha-Sultan, whose murder last June by one of Ahmadinejad’s goon squads was captured on a video seen around the world. We hope the President keeps in mind that the same people whose good faith he now seeks in negotiations were her killers.
Why does the White House want the military to keep quiet about Iranian connections to the Taliban? They want to keep enough political support in the US for direct talks with the mullahs. That support will evaporate if the military starts drawing clear connections between Tehran and the Taliban, especially with al-Qaeda as its ally in Pakistan.
Iran was at war with the US in Iraq. They are at war with us in Afghanistan. Iran does nothing but preach our demise and continues to flaunt their “peaceful” nuclear program in the face of the world.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior.
Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.
Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: “This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background explains a lot about him.
“Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.
“By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.”
The Austrian, Adolf Hitler, had an inferiority complex too being surrounded by Germans. Napoleon was a Corsican among “mainland” French.
Outsiders tend to feel the need to overcompensate. You see it in politicians everywhere.
Wonder what this will do to Ahmadinejad? piss him off? embarrass? humiliate?
The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.
Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation — “Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . ” — and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.
Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama’s the president. Time he understood that.
It is not hard to see why a standing ovation awaits the president at Turtle Bay. Obama’s popularity at the UN boils down essentially to his willingness to downplay American global power. He is the first American president who has made an art form out of apologizing for the United States, which he has done on numerous occasions on foreign soil, from Strasbourg to Cairo. The Obama mantra appears to be – ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do to atone for your country. This is a message that goes down very well in a world that is still seething with anti-Americanism.
Sigh, but since we don’t have a leader with this moral clarity and a set of stones in his slacks, we will have to look to the north to remind us that there are some who do not feel the need to go to the UN to appease and apologize.
Iran’s sole Simorgh AWACS aircraft was lost during a military parade Sept. 22, one of two Iranian military aircraft that crashed in Tehran while participating in a display to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force operated a single Simorgh, a former Iraqi Air Force Adnan. The Adnan AWACS was in turn a modification of a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 transport.
The Simorgh collided with one of the Air Force’s Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighters over the area of the Imam Khomeyni Shrine, southern Tehran. According to eyewitnesses, the crash occurred immediately after the parade. Apparently, no mayday call was issued.
I hope the MOSSAD had something to do with it in preparation of doing what the UN and the international community has failed to do – end Iranian nuclear weapons development.
Month and a half after plan to blow up tallest skyscraper in world exposed, 45 more suspects arrested in addition to eight arrested when plot unraveled. Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese among those detained. Iran suspected to be mastermind behind plot
The defense apparatus in the United Arab Emirates arrested 45 suspects, most of them Palestinian and Lebanese, after the plot to blow up Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower) was uncovered. Dubai Tower, currently under construction, is the tallest building in the world.
The current wave of arrests adds to the eight other suspects detained immediately after the plot was revealed one and a half months ago. The detainees were apparently sent as agents of Iran.
Kuwaiti newspaper, al-Jareeda, reported a month and a half ago that UAE security officials arrested “an armed network affiliated with one of the countries in the region that operated on Ras al-Khaimah.” Dubai was apparently hesitant to say so explicitly, but the implication was towards Iran as the responsible party for the terror network.
Ras al-Khaimah was is the northern-most emirate in the United Arab Emirates and borders the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, both of which run parallel to Iran.
The Kuwaiti newspaper reported that of the eight detainees, two are UAE citizens and the rest are Syrians and Palestinians. They were transferred to Abu Dhabi for investigation under a strict media blackout. According to the report, UAE officials found a weapons cache in a house in which the detainees were staying. One of the detainees with UAE citizenship works in the pharmaceutical industry, and the other UAE citizen is “a member of a well-known family in Abu Dhabi.”
Officials connected to the case reported to Ynet that some of the detainees said in the investigation that they plotted to crash a plane into the Burj Dubai. The plan apparently was to carry out the attack close to the inauguration of the building upon its completion at the end of 2009. According to these same sources, it was possible that the plane would await them in an unofficial airfield in Iran.
Ynet has learned that the UAE has embarked upon an additional wave of arrests as the case has developed. Recently, 45 more suspects were arrested. Most of the detainees in this round of arrests are Lebanese and Palestinian with various citizenships. A majority of them were expelled from the country. The UAE has denied these allegations.
Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) — The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean weapons bound for Iran, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo, diplomats said.The UAE two weeks ago notified the UN Security Council of the seizure, according to the diplomats, who spoke on condition they aren’t named because the communication hasn’t been made public.
The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote a letter to Iran asking for an explanation and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received or further action taken, they said.
The weapons seized on Aug. 14 included rocket launchers, detonators, munitions and ammunition for rocket-propelled grenades, they said. The ship, called the ANL-Australia, was Australian-owned and flying a Bahamas flag.
“I see many ppl with broken arms/legs/heads – blood everywhere – pepper gas like war… ppl run into alleys and militia standing there waiting – from 2 sides they attack ppl in middle of alleys…
saw 7/8 militia beating one woman with baton on ground – she had no defense nothing -… so many ppl arrested – young & old – they take ppl away” just in from Baharestan Sq – situation today is terrible – they beat the ppls like animals Ppl gathered in Baharestan but police & plain cloths don’t let the core of the rally to form.
I guess we now have a chit chat topic for the President when the Iranians come for hot dogs on July 4th. That is, unless the President is no longer outraged but rather, slightly bothered or miffed….
When the man who was actually qualified to be President, John McCain, was asked about his feelings about Obama’s approach to Iran and his own feelings, McCain answered:
Either Sen. John McCain didn’t hear Joe Klein tell him to “be quiet” or he doesn’t care, because the former presidential candidate went right back at his ex-rival Tuesday afternoon for President Obama’s decision not to insert himself into the Iranian crisis.
McCain wouldn’t say which side of the struggle he thought Obama was on.
“Between Ahmadinejad and the reformers, do you think there’s any doubt what side President Obama is on?” McCain (R-Ariz.) was asked by the Huffington Post. “What would be the advantage…?”
“I know what side I’m on,” McCain cut in. “I’m on the side of the people. I’m not on Ahmadinejad’s side or Mousavi. I’m on the side of the Iranian people and I’m on the right side of history. And I’m not going to walk on the other side of the street while people are being killed and beaten in the streets of Iran.”
McCain said Obama’s reaction wasn’t equal to the situation. “We can’t sit by and watch a film clip on television of a young woman bleeding to death and say that we’re worried about the Iranian reaction or our ability to negotiate with them. We have to stand up for those people,” he said.
This can be examined in historical terms by looking at how Reagan supported the Polish people in their efforts to free themselves of their chains. Now, Poland is free and Reagan revered by the entire nation for his unapologetic support. Just ask Lech Walesa:
GDANSK, Poland–When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right. [Completely opposite of what Obama believes! - ed.]
I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity, as well as dissident movements in other countries behind the Iron Curtain, while pushing a defense buildup that pushed the Soviet economy over the brink. Let’s remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for. Did he seek any profit in such a policy? Though our freedom movements were in line with the foreign policy of the United States, I doubt it.
I distinguish between two kinds of politicians. There are those who view politics as a tactical game, a game in which they do not reveal any individuality, in which they lose their own face. [OBAMA!!!! - ed.] There are, however, leaders for whom politics is a means of defending and furthering values. For them, it is a moral pursuit. They do so because the values they cherish are endangered. They’re convinced that there are values worth living for, and even values worth dying for. Otherwise they would consider their life and work pointless. Only such politicians are great politicians and Ronald Reagan was one of them. [emphasis added]
From someone I despise but have to agree with today and when it was said:
Obama’s gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands.
I’m headed to Tahoe for the weekend, so I’m gonna leave you with these tidbits.
First, in the true Obama tradition of pissing on the military every chance he gets is this story I missed in May.
SWORDLESS SAILORS
Graduating midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis are being told in writing to leave at home or in their vehicles all “ceremonial swords” and anything else “that might be considered a weapon or a threat by screeners” for Friday’s outdoor commencement ceremonies featuring an address by President Barack Obama.
Inside the Beltway has obtained the academy’s list of prohibited items for this year’s graduation exercises, which, besides ceremonial swords, includes umbrellas.
I don't understand you and therefore, I fear you...
I received these comments via email:
No Weapons for Anyone
From today’s you couldn’t make it up if you tried file…….Obama’s protectors have ordered graduating Midshipmen….and I suppose Commissioned Officers through Flag rank…to leave their swords at home. Full Dress White includes “wear sword”. More to the point…those badges of office have been earned in a manner Obongo and his minions just wouldn’t begin to understand. Important traditions that inspire are kind of lost on the red banner crowd, apparently.
Further, ceremonial swords never seemed to bother the Secret Service for any previous President. And before World War II, the swords were not particularly “ceremonial”, I’ve seen some of those blades, boarding actions did occur on the China Station pre-war against river pirates, warlords, etc. Those swords were worn not just to graduation, but to Inaugurations, in the receiving line at the White House afterward, to the Inaugural Ball. Somehow nobody gave it a second thought. Somehow even Presidents in the past didn’t presume to specify items of uniform.
But of course, what worked for Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, F.D.R., the Bushes, T.R., any other rational non-cult leader…..doesn’t work for this former state senator anointed by the Chicago machine.
Does he secretly consider our Naval and Military leaders “the enemy”? Perhaps the message this sends escaped his handlers. Sad. And …..follow me on this Obama and minions…..insulting. Actually it’s contemptible.
You can’t make this stuff up. Even the Clintons didn’t show this much disdain for our military and their traditions. He should have spent less time with Ayers, Wright, and the rest of his little circle of friends and more time with the likes of Colin Powell, Petraeus, and the men and women who really serve this nation.
Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.
And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued “dialogue” with their clerical masters.
Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with — which inevitably confers legitimacy upon — leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.
Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.”
Where to begin? “Supreme Leader”?
I gotta a delivery to make to my fellow Americans and our allies alike
Well, these brave Iranians can’t vote for Obama, so what does he really care. He has 230+ years of progress to destroy.
Of all our foreign-policy failures in my lifetime, our current shunning of those demanding free elections and expanded civil rights in Iran reminds me most of Hungary in 1956.
For years, we encouraged the Hungarians to rise up against oppression. When they did, we watched from the sidelines as Russian tanks drove over them.
For decades, Washington policymakers from both parties have prodded Iranians to throw off their shackles. Last Friday, millions of Iranians stood up. And we’re standing down.
The noise of the crowd was the first thing to hit me. I had been among demonstrators before, but I had never actually heard an angry crowd before.
The noise was powerful and full of fury. As I approached the street, I distinguished what they were chanting: “mikosham, mikosham, aanke baradaram kosht: I shall kill, I shall kill, he who killed my brother.”
My wife, who was among the crowd, had told me that several people had been killed by riot police. I quickened my pace and approached the street. As if in sync, hands bearing stones and bricks were pumping into the air. “I shall kill, I shall kill…” I burst into tears.
The next thing I noticed surprised me: the crowd did not consist of young men, but housewives, seniors, businessmen wearing suits, even children. There was blood on many of them. They were walking downhill towards the Interior Ministry, determined and in force. The wave that had taken over Iran and partied in the streets into the morning for the last few weeks was now an army on the move. As I stood in place trying to figure out what I was seeing, I noticed shopkeepers shutting down and joining the flock. People were also chanting on the sidelines, “down with the dictator,” referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, while the crowd chanted “join us proud Iranians, join us, join us.” The crowd was growing by the moment.
I do not want to minimize the brave Iranians who are in the streets, but I cannot get past the thought that had the anti-Bush/War/EverythingElse-unwashed-street-theater-crowds been actually serious during the past eight years, our streets would have looked like those in Iran and the protesters might have been taken seriously. Costumes, signs, bumper stickers, and safe family-friendly week-end marches by Volvo and Prius just don’t have the same “umph” to them as what we are seeing in Tehran.
I am glad to see the entire world has not succumb to the casual un-seriousness we had to endure here in America and that some would actually risk themselves for their beliefs.
I do fear, however, that this movement may be a waste of time unless the aim of the Iranian people is to replace not only their nut job president, but also the ruling mullahs who have castrated a great people and culture.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution
