Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Latest Obama Assault Upon the Constitution and the Rule of Law



It's starting, folks!

"The Obama administration is initiating a program to give refugee status to some young people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in response to the influx of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border."

* PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS NO AUTHORITY TO DO THIS, PEOPLE!

"Under the program, immigrants from those countries who are lawfully in the United States will be able to request that child relatives still in those three countries be resettled in the United States as refugees."

* THIS IS INSANITY...!!!

"The program would establish in-country processing to screen the young people to determine if they qualify to join relatives in the U.S."

* INSANITY...!!!

"In a memorandum to the State Department, the White House allocated 4,000 slots for refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean."

* ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8, OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES CLEARLY DELEGATES TO CONGRESS THE SOLE POWER TO:

* TO REGULATE COMMERCE WITH FOREIGN NATIONS...

* TO ESTABLISH AN UNIFORM RULE OF NATURALIZATION...

* FOLKS... AGAIN... OUR CONSTITUTION... THE RULE OF LAW... IS BEING TRASHED.

He's Simple a Contemptable Human Being



Josh Kraushaar via National Journal:

In attempting to downplay the political damage from a slew of second-term controversies, President Obama has counted on the American people having a very short memory span and a healthy suspension of disbelief.

* AND HE WON HIS BET! HE WAS RE-ELECTED IN 2012!

The time-tested strategy for Obama: Claim he's in the dark about his own administration's activities, blame the mess on subordinates, and hope that with the passage of time, all will be forgotten.

(Harry Truman, the president isn't. He's more likely to pass the buck.)

His latest eyebrow-raiser came on 60 Minutes on Sunday, when the president blamed the failure to anticipate the rise of ISIS on his intelligence community for not informing him of the growing threat. "I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," Obama said.

* BUT OF COURSE CLAPPER HASN'T BEEN FIRED...

(*SNORT*)

* OBAMA BLAMES... OBAMA ABSOLVES...

(*SARCASTICALLY BOWING MY HEAD*)

Most early news reports dutifully pinned the blame on the intelligence agencies, with the president escaping any further scrutiny.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

But anyone following the news over the past year would have been better informed than the commander in chief. As NBC foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel said on MSNBC Monday: "It's surprising that the president said that U.S. intelligence missed this one, because it seems that U.S. intelligence was the only group that missed this one. Everyone knew that Islamic extremists were on the rise in Syria and in Iraq; it was well documented. The extremists were publicizing their activities online — they were bragging about it. Journalists, including us, were interviewing foreign fighters. This was no state secret."

Former Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, the highest-ranking former military officer ever elected to Congress, told National Journal that the president was wrong to pass the buck. "As commander in chief, you're accountable. You're the one who is responsible whether the good ship of state is doing it right," said Sestak, pointing to congressional testimony from former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn in February 2014 regarding the growing threat posed by ISIS. "The administration failed, and the president is the captain of the ship and should assume accountability."

* OH, PLEASE! WHERE WERE THESE FINE SENTIMENTS WHEN YOU WERE ACTUALLY A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE?!

Sestak is considering a Pennsylvania Senate bid in 2016...

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

The president's defenders pointed to a recent David Ignatius interview with Clapper in The Washington Post, in which the intelligence chief indeed claimed he provided the White House with evidence of ISIS's "prowess and capability." At the same time, he also acknowledged downplaying the enemy's "will to fight" and overestimating the capabilities of the Iraqi forces. It was an odd admission, given the long-demonstrated ruthlessness of the extremists in Iraq and Syria, and the long-reported struggles of Iraq's military. And given the rosy projections of post-war Iraq during the Bush administration, it's unusual to hear intelligence agencies making the same mistake twice.

* NO IT'S NOT! THAT'S THE HISTORY OF HISTORY!

(*SNORT*)

Still, it's clear that Obama wasn't blindsided by the rising threat from Islamic extremists in the Middle East. Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder even warned that the emerging threat was "more frightening than anything" — back in July.

The elements of the administration's blame, deny, and wait-it-out communications strategy has been front and center amid all the recent controversies. When the administration badly botched the launch of the health care exchange website, Obama said he was "not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to."

(This, for his signature achievement in office.)

Blame was later pinned on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who left the administration in April.

When officials at the Internal Revenue Service improperly targeted conservative outside groups for scrutiny, Obama first feigned outrage, saying he had "no patience for" the misconduct. But months later, as the public's anger subsided, Obama said there "wasn't even a smidgen of corruption" at the agency, and the administration has done little to hold anyone accountable since.

* YEP! EXACTLY RIGHT! I REMEMBER THAT EXACTLY SAME OBAMA QUOTE!

After CNN reported that Veterans Affairs Department offices covered up long wait times at several of its facilities, former Obama press secretary Jay Carney said, "We learned about them through the [news] reports."

(*SNORT*)

Long wait times were hardly a secret, with Obama himself campaigning on VA reform as a candidate. To his credit, Obama [eventually] signed legislation reforming the VA and replaced embattled Secretary Eric Shinseki. But the president himself escaped much of the blame, even though he was clearly familiar with the long-standing problems that the agency faced.

* SOMEHOW I DOUBT THAT THE VA IS AS "REFORMED" AS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.

The administration's approach to controversies was best crystallized by former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, who deflected criticism about allegations that talking points on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were altered for political reasons. "Dude, this was two years ago," he told Bret Baier of Fox News. The remarks were perceived as flippant, but they underscored the success of the administration's public-relations strategy. Buy enough time, and inevitably problems tend to go away — especially in today's attention-deprived environment.

* EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU READING THIS WHO INITIALLY BOUGHT THE ADMINISTRATION'S BULLSHIT ON BENGHAZI AND THEN - EVEN AS MORE AND MORE PROOF TO THE CONTRARY KEPT GETTING RELEASED - BASICALLY "BOUGHT" OBAMA'S "RUN OUT THE CLOCK" CRISIS MANAGEMENT PLAN... YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES.

The difference between bureaucratic incompetence and not being fully truthful with the American public is a big one.

* OR AT LEAST IT USED TO BE; STILL IS TO PEOPLE WITH PRINCIPLES.

(*SHRUG*)

In the aftermath of scandal, it's easy to understand why the administration, when choosing between portraying the president as disconnected or dissembling, has chosen the former. But throughout his presidency, Obama has acted far from detached. In his second term, he's relied increasingly on loyalists who are less likely to push back against the president's wishes. It's hard to square a president who reportedly is micromanaging airstrikes in Syria with a president who was unaware of the growing threat from Islamic extremists, which had been increasingly trumpeted on the network news.

"The biggest deficit [in politics now] isn't the debt. It's the trust deficit in our politics," said Sestak. "A year or two ago, when the administration signaled it wasn't going to use the [phrase] 'War on Terror,' that wasn't correct. When they walked away from that, they suggested to the public we've got this in the bag."

Indeed, at a time of American military conflict, truth in advertising is especially important. The president has avoided using the word "war" in describing the conflict with ISIS and new terrorist cells in Syria, but it's hard to view it any other way. Military advisers have said ground troops will be necessary to prevail, even as the president continually rules out that option (most likely because it's politically unpopular). Obama ridiculed the strength of the moderate Syrian militias just last month in an interview with The New York Times' Tom Friedman, but now he's praising their skill after his strategy abruptly changed.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

It's understandable that the president was trying to avoid acknowledging that he personally downplayed the threat from ISIS; as a sound bite, it would've been politically damaging.

* NO. NO, IT'S REALLY NOT UNDERSTANDABLE.

But it is crucially important, going forward, that he's brutally honest with both himself and the American people about the mission. Using campaign-style techniques to deflect criticism from domestic controversies might be expected from any administration. But when national security is at stake, politics should stop at the White House's edge.

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, September 30, 2014



And now... today's Newsbites!

(Found in the Comments Section!)


Does It Matter?



Does the following bother you lurkers?

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014.

Let me put it another way; would any of you anti-Tea Party folks (fair description?) agree with me that by definition this is a massive dereliction of duty on the part of President Obama?

The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.

Now... again addressing those of you who tend to think of yourselves as less conservative, more liberal, less Republican, more Democrat; how do you people process this?

The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” said Obama.

According to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, members of the Defense establishment were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s attempt to shift blame.

“Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting,” a former senior Pentagon official “who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq” told the Daily Beast.

On Monday, others in the intelligence community similarly blasted Obama and said he’s shown longstanding disinterest in receiving live, in-person PDBs that allow the Commander-in-Chief the chance for critical follow-up, feedback, questions, and the challenging of flawed intelligence assumptions.

“It's pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” an Obama national security staffer told the Daily Mail on Monday. “He gets them in writing.” The Obama security staffer said the president’s PDBs have contained detailed threat warnings about the Islamic State dating back to before the 2012 presidential election.

“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president's daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012 election,” the Obama security staffer told the Daily Mail.

This is not the first time questions have been raised about Obama’s lack of engagement and interest in receiving in-person daily intelligence briefings. On September 10, 2012, the GAI released a similar report showing that Obama had attended less than half (43.8%) of his daily intelligence briefings up to that point. When Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen mentioned the GAI’s findings in his column, then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney dubbed the findings “hilarious.” The very next day, U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American staff members were murdered in Benghazi.

Not... "hilarious."

And, folks... never forget... never forget that screech out of Hillary Rodham Clinton, "WHAT DOES IT MATTER...?!?!"

Apparently Mrs. Clinton was only echoing her former boss' lackadaisical attitude towards ongoing threats to America.

As Breitbart News reported at the time, the White House’s very own presidential calendar revealed Obama had not received his daily intel briefing in the five consecutive days leading up to the Benghazi attacks.

Yep. I remember that. (Do any of you lurkers who voted for Obama at least one remember that?)

Ultimately, as ABC News reported, the White House did not directly dispute the GAI’s numbers but instead said Obama prefers to read his PDB on his iPad instead of receiving the all-important live, in-person briefings.

Again... it's not about reading (though how do we confirm he even bothers to read the brief?), it's about responding... asking questions... demanding follow-up... communicating to subordinates at all levels what it is you need to know!

Now, with ISIS controlling over 35,000 square miles of territory in its widening caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and with Obama pointing fingers at his own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for the rise of ISIS, the question remains whether a 42% attendance record on daily intelligence briefings is good enough for most Americans.

Well...???