“…If Obama has consistently meant what he said–both the callous sophistry of his pre-presidential pronouncements and his assertion today about America’s obligation to act, even without international support, in the face of human-rights abuses–he has undergone one hell of a conversion. And maybe he has, although it would be easier to credit his sincerity if he offered some explanation for the turnabout.”
But in this commentary from the WSJ, Norman Podhoretz offers another explanation for Der Obafuhrer’s otherwise-inexplicable behavior and conduct, an alternative theory we’ve expounded since America was first cursed with his presence on a national level:
Obama’s Successful Foreign Failure
The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad.
It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama’s way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as “incompetent,” “bungling,” “feckless,” “amateurish” and “in over his head” coming from his political opponents on the right.
For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world? As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all.
Summing up the net effect of all this, 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.”
So far as domestic affairs were concerned, it soon became clear—even to some of those who had persuaded themselves that Mr. Obama was a moderate and a pragmatist—that the fundamental transformation he had in mind was to turn this country into as close a replica of the social-democratic countries of Europe as the constraints of our political system allowed.
Since he had enough support for the policies that this objective entailed, those constraints were fairly loose, and so he only needed a minimum of rhetorical deception in pursuing it. All it took was to deny he was doing what he was doing by frequently singing the praises of the free-enterprise system he was assiduously working to undermine, by avoiding the word “socialism,” by invoking “fairness” as an overriding ideal and by playing on resentment of the “rich.”
But foreign policy was another matter. As a left-wing radical, Mr. Obama believed that the United States had almost always been a retrograde and destructive force in world affairs. Accordingly, the fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country’s power and influence. And just as he had to fend off the still-toxic socialist label at home, so he had to take care not to be stuck with the equally toxic “isolationist” label abroad.
This he did by camouflaging his retreats from the responsibilities bred by foreign entanglements as a new form of “engagement.” At the same time, he relied on the war-weariness of the American people and the rise of isolationist sentiment (which, to be sure, dared not speak its name) on the left and right to get away with drastic cuts in the defense budget, with exiting entirely from Iraq and Afghanistan, and with “leading from behind” or using drones instead of troops whenever he was politically forced into military action.
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 problem for Mr. Obama is that at least since the end of World War II, Americans have taken pride in being No. 1. Unless the American people have been as fundamentally transformed as their country is quickly becoming, America’s decline will not sit well. With more than three years in office to go, will Mr. Obama be willing and able to endure the continuing erosion of his popularity that will almost certainly come with the erosion of the country’s power and influence?
No doubt he will either deny that anything has gone wrong, or failing that, he will resort to his favorite tactic of blaming others—Congress or the Republicans or Rush Limbaugh. But what is also almost certain is that he will refuse to change course and do the things that will be necessary to restore U.S. power and influence.
And so we can only pray that the hole he will go on digging will not be too deep for his successor to pull us out, as Ronald Reagan managed to do when he followed a president into the White House whom Mr. Obama so uncannily resembles.
At least Jimmy Carter, however naive and hopelessly misguided he may be, practices what he preaches. But as much as we despise The Dear Misleader, he’s at least acting out of conviction to principles; Marxist principles which are totally antithetical to those of the Founding Fathers, but principles nonetheless.
What excuse can THESE…
…faithless fools offer?!?
Meanwhile, the MSM, irreversibly committed to defending the indefensible, either continues to blame Bush…
…pretends the public just doesn’t get it…
…or continues to raise the cry of racism:
Donald Trump?!? How many ways can we say it? Our problem with Obama isn’t that he’s Black, or to more accurately reflect the prevailing view of Progressives, White-Black; it’s that he’s…
…Red!
Though after having failed to convince America of the wisdom of his proposed Syrian subterfuge, The Dear Misleader decides to let us all in on his real purpose:
Next up, in the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” segment, the Journal offers positive proof The Obamao’s underlings truly take their example from the top:
Duncan Votes Present
The Education Secretary pleads ignorance about an anti-voucher lawsuit.
Asked in a radio interview this week about the Justice Department’s recent lawsuit to block Louisiana’s school voucher program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan pleaded ignorance. “I’m not familiar with that lawsuit,” said the man whose department scrutinizes state education reforms in great detail as part of the Race to the Top competition. “That’s between the Department of Justice and the state of Louisiana.”
C’mon, Arne. You can do better than that. As President Obama’s cabinet secretaries go, Mr. Duncan has been one of the better ones. At least he has been willing to challenge a couple of the shibboleths of the union status quo. But if he really did first hear about the Louisiana lawsuit from a reporter, then maybe it’s time he returned to Chicago. He’s clearly not interested in his job anymore.
To recap for Mr. Duncan and his staff: Two weeks ago the Justice Department asked a federal court to enjoin 34 school districts in Louisiana from issuing vouchers under the statewide reform that passed in 2012. Only students from families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line and who attend schools graded C or lower are eligible. Ninety percent of recipients are black.
According to the lawsuit, vouchers “appeared to impede the desegregation process” by “increasing the racial identifiability” of certain schools. Incredibly, the suit objected that in some cases the departing black kids left their former schools with a student body with more white students. Meanwhile, studies from Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. have found that voucher recipients increase integration by letting minority children escape geographic school boundaries.
Governor Bobby Jindal this week asked the court for more time to respond to Justice’s suit because much of the data the state needs to make its case isn’t yet available. He also got to the heart of the matter by noting that the real motive for this lawsuit is union politics. The teachers unions have been trying to block the voucher plan by any means possible, but so far they’ve failed. Bringing in the feds for a desegregation gambit is merely the latest attempt.
The Advocate daily newspaper in Baton Rouge reports that former Justice Department Civil Rights chief Thomas Perez, who is now Labor Secretary, was nosing around the state earlier this year. On Thursday we reported that Mr. Perez had threatened California with a loss of federal cash if it didn’t exempt Teamster and Amalgamated Transit Union transit workers from pension reforms. If Mr. Perez is now also running education policy, it really is time for Mr. Duncan to leave.
Welcome to Team Tick-Tock, Arne…
…you fit right in!
And in the Environmental Moment, courtesy of the WSJ, as Der Spiegel informs us, having experienced the first signs of adverse weather, the forecast for the future of renewable energy continues to darken with nightmare speed…at least for those footing the bill:
Germany’s switch to renewables has caused electricity prices to soar.
German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany . . .
Former Environment Minister Jürgen Tritten of the Green Party once claimed that switching Germany to renewable energy wasn’t going to cost citizens more than one scoop of ice cream. Today his successor [Peter] Altmaier admits consumers are paying enough to “eat everything on the ice cream menu.”
For society as a whole, the costs have reached levels comparable only to the euro-zone bailouts. This year, German consumers will be forced to pay €20 billion ($26 billion) for electricity from solar, wind and biogas plants—electricity with a market price of just over €3 billion. Even the figure of €20 billion is disputable if you include all the unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project.Solar panels and wind turbines at times generate huge amounts of electricity, and sometimes none at all. Depending on the weather and the time of day, the country can face absurd states of energy surplus or deficit.
A cheaper alternative to current renewable energy options.
If there is too much power coming from the grid, wind turbines have to be shut down. Nevertheless, consumers are still paying for the “phantom electricity” the turbines are theoretically generating. Occasionally, Germany has to pay fees to dump already subsidized green energy, creating what experts refer to as “negative electricity prices.”
On the other hand, when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That’s when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany’s energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011. . . .
In the near future, an average three-person household will spend about €90 a month for electricity. That’s about twice as much as in 2000.
Then, in yet another Environazi-related atrocity, FOX News reports…
Gold miners in remote Alaska town want answers after task force storms in
Some miners in Alaska want the feds to start digging for answers. A task force including members of 10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid.
“Imagine coming up to your diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body armor, with jackets that say “POLICE” emblazoned on them, and all packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have I done now?”
A spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency did not deny that agents wore body armor and carried guns, but said it was not a “raid.” “The ongoing investigation conducted by the AK Environmental Crimes Task Force — consisting of EPA, ADEC, USFWS, ADFG, BLM, Coast Guard, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, NOAA, & US Park Service — did not result in a raid,” the statement read. “The Task Force members involved in the investigation during the week of August 19, 2013, were EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division & Bureau of Land Management’s Office of Law Enforcement & Security, in cooperation with ADEC’s Environmental Crimes Unit.”
The investigation was into possible violations of the Clean Water Act, according to the EPA.(GASP!!!) The officers were part of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and visited the outpost near the Canadian border during the third week of August to investigate water discharges into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.
Late Thursday, Alaska Gov.Sean Parnell announced he had ordered an investigation into the incident, adding, “this level of intrusion and intimidation of Alaskans is absolutely unacceptable.”
Think about it: if you believe Obama, America can’t afford an effective Military. Yet Washington still finds the funds to send armed representatives of ten…count ’em, TEN…separate agencies (the EPA, ADEC, USFWS, ADFG, BLM, Coast Guard, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, NOAA, & US Park Service) to “investigate” a purported violation of the Clean Water Act?!?
Yeah…
Turning from the Liar Side to the Lighter Side…
And in the Health Section, brought to us today by Breitbart, more disturbing news for those concerned about America’s future:
Almost Half of U.S. Births Covered by Medicaid
According to researchers from the George Washington University (GWU) School of Public Health, in 2010, almost half of all births in the United States were paid for by Medicaid, and that rate is only going to go up. Medicaid was responsible for 48% of the 3.8 million births in 2010, an increase of 90,000 births from 2008, which was an 8% increase during that period.
Lead investigator Anne Markus, an associate professor of health policy at GWU, said, “As states expand coverage, low-income women of childbearing age will be able to obtain more continuous coverage before and between pregnancies. Now, for the first time, researchers will have a comprehensive baseline that will help them determine how increased access to services might change pregnancies and ultimately birth outcomes.” (Great for Progressive planners, bad for the country!)
Study co-author Cynthia Pellegrini, senior vice president for public policy and government affairs at the March of Dimes, said that the analysis would help to ascertain how successful Medicaid was in addressing the reduction of childbirth complications and the health of women and their babies: “This study gives us a window into the vital role Medicaid plays in maternal and child health. With these data in hand, we’ll be able to accurately monitor the impact of Medicaid expansion and other factors on the births covered by state Medicaid programs.”
In New York City in 2009, 76% of Hispanic births were covered by Medicaid, 70% of births in the black community were covered, and 31% of whites.
After all, why worry about having kids you can’t afford when someone else is paying for them? Then again, why worry about having kids at all when you can just kill ’em right up until the minute they breath…or even, at least according to The Obamao, well after?!?
Finally, we’ll call it a day with “Your Tax Dollars at Work”, and the latest life-saving legislation out of the Nation’s Capital:
If they’re going to start protecting people from their own stupidity, a 24-hour waiting period prior to purchasing lottery tickets would seem in order…or at least proof the buyer isn’t receiving public assistance!
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