Category: Democrats
Shorter Krugman: ‘Kool-Aid, Anyone?’
Delusional partisan cheerleading:
Several times in recent weeks I’ve found myself in conversations with liberals who shake their heads sadly and express their disappointment with President Obama. Why? I suspect that they’re being influenced, often without realizing it, by the prevailing media narrative.
The truth is that these days much of the commentary you see on the Obama administration — and a lot of the reporting too — emphasizes the negative: the contrast between the extravagant hopes of 2008 and the prosaic realities of political trench warfare, the troubles at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the mess in Iraq, and so on. The accepted thing, it seems, is to portray Mr. Obama as floundering, his presidency as troubled if not failed.
But this is all wrong. You should judge leaders by their achievements, not their press, and in terms of policy substance Mr. Obama is having a seriously good year. In fact, there’s a very good chance that 2014 will go down in the record books as one of those years when America took a major turn in the right direction.
A major turn in the right direction? Krugman isn’t just drinking the Kool-Aid, he’s huffing the glue and smoking the meth.
Judas Priest Shout-Out To Princess Chelsea Clinton
by Smitty
The expectant 34-year-old stepped out wearing leather leggings and sky-high Christian Louboutin heels during an appearance at the 2014 Wildlife Conservation Society Gala at the Central Park Zoo in New York City last night.
We’ll let Dustbury review the footwear, but how about the trou?
As Obama’s fundamental transformation of our country continues to move us off that pesky Constitution and pave the way for Rule By Overlords, it’s important that the peasantry be afforded at least the hope of distraction by fashion.
As Her Majesty uncoils from her torpor and prepares for residence in the Oval Throneroom, the peasants can be pleased at the style on display by the underpaid, pauper princess. So let’s reach back to the realm of another queen for a wee salute:
The Iraq Disaster
Four years ago, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that Obama’s Iraq policy would be “one of the greatest achievements” of his administration. If by “greatest achievements,” you mean anarchy as Iraq is overrun by al-Qaeda terrorists, I guess Biden was right:
The likely breakup of Iraq into feuding ethnic and sectarian bastions accelerated Friday as Iraq’s senior Shiite Muslim cleric broke years of support for the central government and decreed that every able-bodied Shiite man had a religious obligation to defend the sect’s holy sites from rebellious Sunni Muslims led by fighters from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In answer to the call, thousands of Shiites — many with militia experience from the sectarian war that pitted Sunnis against Shiites and killed thousands from 2006 to 2008– flooded the cities of Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala to receive weapons, enlist in organized units and receive their orders.
The Shiite-led government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remained in paralysis Friday, unable to form a coherent response after al-Qaida-inspired militants blitzed and captured entire chunks of the nation’s Sunni heartland this week, including major cities, towns, military and police bases as Iraqi forces melted away or fled.
The new reality is the biggest threat to Iraq’s stability since the U.S. withdrawal at the end of 2011, and it has pushed the nation closer to a precipice that would partition it into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.
Fighters from the militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Thursday vowed to march on Baghdad, joined by Saddam Hussein-era loyalists and other disaffected Sunnis.
Trumpeting their victory, the militants also declared they would impose Shariah law in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city they captured on Tuesday, and other areas they seized.
[A]ny reduction in the flow of Iraqi crude due to the ongoing Islamic insurgency in the northern Iraq cities of Mosul and Tikrit could have worldwide economic consequences, according to oil industry analyst Phill Flynn, who said speculators are watching for the worst-case scenario.
“They think that Baghdad will not fall and that will be a more spirited defense of that city,” Flynn said. “But if it does fall and if the terrorists move further south, the price you’re paying at the pump today is gonna look like a bargain in a couple weeks.”
Can the U.S. embassy in Iraq withstand attack? Gosh, why does this all seem so familiar? It’s like the 1970s or something.
Hey, @BarackObama, your #Iraq policy is working out awesome! http://t.co/kREuSRckRW pic.twitter.com/TjafQ7F2mn
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 13, 2014
If Hillary Can’t Even Handle NPR …
. . . how could she deal with genuinely critical media?
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got into a testy exchange with NPR’s Terry Gross on Thursday, as Gross tried to get Clinton to explain her views on marriage equality over time.
Gross attempted to get the former secretary of state to explain whether she had changed her mind over time on the issue of marriage equality or whether she supported marriage equality previously but felt she couldn’t say so due to the popular and political opposition.
She evidently didn’t think of the most obvious answer.
“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Priorities!
Iraq is on the verge of becoming a failed state overrun by terrorists, and the Obama administration has nothing but empty words to offer.
At such a time of international crisis, it’s comforting to know that the Democrat Party has its priorities straight:
Four Democratic senators were so appalled by George Will’s widely panned arguments about rape statistics on college campuses that the lawmakers reached out directly to the conservative columnist to upbraid him for his “ancient beliefs.”
In a letter made public on Thursday, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Robert Casey (D-PA) ripped Will for a piece that has been publicly denounced by one of the columnist’s own Washington Post colleagues.
“Having an ongoing interest in ways to reduce sexual assaults on college campuses, we read your June 6 column on campus sexual assault with particular dismay,” the senators wrote. “Your thesis and statistics fly in the face of everything we know about this issue.”
Yes, the most urgent business facing the United States Senate is a newspaper columnist’s thoughts about sex on college campuses.
The Politics of Blame
After five years of excuses, straw-man arguments and scapegoating, the Obama administration’s incompetence and irresponsibility have exhausted the patience of many Democrats, Ron Fournier reports:
The email hit my in-box at 9:41 p.m. last Wednesday. From one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, a close adviser to the White House, the missive amounted to an electronic eye roll. “Even I have had enough.”
Another Democrat had quit on President Obama.
The tipping point for this person was the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl case—not the soldier-for-Taliban swap itself as much as how the White House mishandled its obligation to communicate effectively and honestly to Congress and the public. More than that, Obama’s team had failed once again to acknowledge its mistakes, preferring to cast blame and seek cover behind talking points.
“DC is hard, and depressing,” the Democrat wrote. “I still believe good comes from government (e.g. 8 million in ACA). But that Politico story is a cautionary one: good reminder that you can’t go so in the bunker [and] no longer identify legitimate criticism.” That day, Politico had posted a story channeling the White House communications team’s response to the Bergdahl backlash. . . .
Victor Davis Hanson Nails It
by Smitty
Obama uses a host of emphatics (e.g., Period!, Let me be clear!, Make no mistake about it!) precisely because he seeks to accomplish in speech what he cannot do in fact.
Part of the recovery process for this country will be a renewed emphasis on seeing sermons, rather than hearing them.