President Obama's week

[B-Man]

After several days of discussing Paula Deen, Rachel Jeantel, Nazi flags, and the like. Perhaps I will post a few articles to remind us of what our Chief Executive is up to.

 

 

Africa has never been a priority for the United States

 

By AHMEDNASIR ABDULLAHI

 

 

President Barack Obama’s visit to three countries in Africa has failed to excite, annoy or even disappoint. In fact, it is slowly passing out as a non-event.

 

 

Many on the continent have no view on the visit. They are rightly not bothered about the visit. Except a few Kenyans who initially voiced their disappointment that he would skip the country of his forefathers in his tour of Africa.

 

 

But to their credit, even this minority has now recollected its thoughts, recomposed itself and rationalised the visit. So what does the visit really mean for Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania? Nothing!

 

 

President Obama is not Candidate Obama of five years ago. He is a pale shadow of the man who mesmerised the world with his oratorical skills, inspirational speeches and wide smiles. He is a limping version of the giant of a man who swept the world with his moving speeches, deep thinking and a great promise of a better tomorrow.

 

 

He is not the man who promised so much good to the entire world that mankind, in a moment of universal seduction, thought that Obama was a global messiah in Uncle Sam’s guise to deliver the globe to a long and sustained period of peace, love, unity and universal prosperity.

 

 

President Obama is not the man the American people gambled their fate with. Five years after his first election, Obama has shrunk so much in stature that he is barely recognizable in the global stage were it not for his black skin.

 

 

So how does one explain the dramatic metamorphosis of the giant into a dwarf in such a short time?

 

 

The simple answer is that apart from the symbolism of his persona, Obama has failed to show substance especially on the global stage.

 

 

Obama has been a monumental disappointment both in America and on the global stage. He is no Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton, two politicians on either side of the political spectrum who achieved so much both inside America and globally.

 

 

Both at home and globally, Obama has been defined by total lack of any conviction to drive him apart from becoming president to propel his tenure as a worthwhile enterprise. That is why his presidency, in terms of transformative agenda and substantive achievements whether at home or abroad, probably ranks lowly compared to his immediate predecessor.

 

 

Both at home and abroad, Obama has failed to outgrow the defining symbolism of being the first African-American to be elected president in America.

 

 

He has failed to define his presidency and achievements in themes other than the complexion of his skin. His great promises have turned into nightmares all around. He hunts his opponents like rabbits whether they are Americans or foreigners. He spies and eavesdrops on all like the typical Orwellian state and listens to the most intimate of conversations in the name of national security.

 

 

Obama knows a lot about Africa. That he chose to ground his main speech in Senegal on the need for African states to expand the rights of gay people shows his obsession with shallow symbolism.

 

 

Obama should know that Africans are addressing more important and pressing challenges like the right to food, education, affordable health care, access to drinking water, etc. The point he was really intent on making on gay rights is that America will deal with Africans on its terms and on issues as it defines.

 

 

Obama is loved and adored in Kenya and in Africa. He will be welcomed like a returning hero. He will make great inspiring speeches. But don’t expect a lot. There is no substance in his great speeches. He is the head of an empire in its twilight facing many challenges. Africa is not a priority and has never been one.

 

 

 

 

Ahmednasir Abdullahi is the publisher, Nairobi Law Monthly. macalin91@gmail.com

Edited July 1, 2013 by B-Man

[B-Man]

A climate demagogue

 

Even those who believe that emissions of carbon dioxide are causing unacceptable warming of the earth — and frankly the evidence for that is thus far less than convincing — should be ashamed of President Obama’s demagogic arguments for action.

 

The fact sheet on the president’s speech this week said carbon “pollution” is “contributing to higher rates of asthma attacks and more frequent and severe floods and heat waves.” His measures would “protect the health of our children.”

 

“For the children” usually means the orator has run out of good arguments.

 

It’s the first assertion we’ve seen that carbon dioxide produces or worsens asthma. The Environmental Protection Agency has never asserted that. The only way a child could be hurt by carbon dioxide, essential for plant life and produced in human breath, would be by being hit in the head with a block of dry ice — frozen carbon dioxide.

 

In a second badly misnamed “fact sheet” — this one specifically for Massachusetts — the White House seeks to blame “climate change” for tropical storm Irene, emergency room visits due to heat stress in 2009 (it did not include “facts” on whether that was up or down from previous years or even since 2009) and 2,380 cases of Lyme disease.

 

Yes to hear the Obama administration tell it, we are indeed simply doomed.

 

However, most international and national agencies have found no increase in storm activity. Warming? The alarmist British Meteorological Office finds no warming since 1998 while the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased by 7.4 percent.

 

Doomsday scenarios depend largely on unreliable computer models whose builders have no explanation for such conflicts.

Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, a skeptic, calculates that a 50 percent reduction in annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050 — a far greater reduction than Obama seeks — would, according to current models, produce in 2100 a reduction in average temperature of 0.13 degree Fahrenheit.

 

Without believable computer models, it’s senseless to follow Obama down the road of economic self-mutilation.

 

http://bostonherald....h.SYnFHnov.dpuf

 

.

[Koko78]

Please, he's far too busy to make speeches about little things like food, clean water, etc. The man's gotta critique impromptu rappers.

 

When the song ended, Obama exclaimed “you gotta drop the mic!” as he motioned for him to do just that.

 

 

“I like that. Fantastic,” Obama said, as the boy sat back down.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/obama-advises-young-rapper-to-drop-the-mic/

 

Besides, all the Chosen One has to do upon his return is throw another beer summit on the White House lawn, and everything will be alright in the world.

[IDBillzFan]

Besides, all the Chosen One has to do upon his return is throw another beer summit on the White House lawn, and everything will be alright in the world.

 

For example, all seems well in Egypt.

[Keukasmallies]

Crap, I thought the title said, "President Obama's weak."

[B-Man]

 

What, Obama worry?

 

Can the United States survive the remaining 3 1/2 years of the Obama presidency? That was the question I asked a well-known veteran of Washington politics and national-security issues. Though a Democrat, he is trusted and respected by both parties for his many years of advice and troubleshooting service to the nation.

 

I asked the question because our long conversation reflected shared worries about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and America’s retreat. We discussed the disasters of Syria, Benghazi and Obama’s strange support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. We agreed the odds were growing that Iran would get a nuclear weapon and feared what it would mean for Israel and our Arab allies.

 

We expressed shock at the lasting damage done to our intelligence agencies by Edward Snowden, the sloppy background check that enabled him to get security clearance in the first place and the Keystone Kops effort to capture him. We winced that our nation’s reputation was an international punch line as Russia and China mocked our president.

Given that context, my question of whether America can survive Obama was not just a figure of speech or an exaggerated musing. I meant it literally.

My friend understood my meaning.

 

“I don’t know,” he said. When I pressed him, he reviewed the scope of the global disorder we had just discussed, and repeated his answer. “I don’t know,” he said a second time.

 

The exchange happened last week, and my heart skips a beat when I recall it. His answer wasn’t what I expected or hoped for.

 

Despite my pessimism, I wanted to be talked out of it. I wanted this wise man, with his experience and calm temperament, to tell me not to worry, that we had been through worse before and America would be fine.

 

Maybe we will be fine. But the sense that the walls are closing in on us and that we are showing weakness to an emboldened, hostile world fills me with dread. I have a growing fear we are on the verge of a catastrophe.

 

Nor does it help that our president seems somewhere between indifferent and oblivious to growing global threats. His $100 million, weeklong family trip to Africa, no doubt to be followed by an August vacation, seems off-key.

 

And his answers at a press conference in Senegal to questions about Snowden were beyond bizarre. As my colleague Geoff Earle wrote from Washington, the president adopted a “What, me worry?” tone.

 

“I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said. His answer was classic Obama — setting up a straw man by falsely suggesting somebody had proposed he send jets, then minimizing Snowden’s crime by calling him a “hacker,” as though he had played a computer prank.

 

In fact, Snowden has been charged in a federal indictment with espionage, among other counts.

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

The Age of Obama: A Stronger Government And A Weaker America. Well, that’s been the plan all along.

What does Obama get in return for his push for big government? A government that loves him back. Unlike the financial, insurance and real-estate industries that have been fickle about him — showering him with hosannas and cash in 2008, while offering a relative trickle of support in 2012—Obama remains the living end for government workers.

 

IRS employees donated to Obama over Romney by a 4-to-1 margin, IRS attorneys favored Obama by 20-to-1, and government lawyers at the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Education shut out the Romney campaign completely. The federal bureaucracy had effectively lined up against nearly half the country.

 

Meanwhile, the White House press secretary dissembles daily; the intelligence community appears incapable of delivering a complete and truthful answer to Congress, and IRS employees apparently enjoyed a giant tax payer funded party catered by Wolfgang Puck.

 

Given this totality, public distrust of Washington should come as no surprise.

 

For the record, spending $2.4 million on an Olympics-themed confab, complete with an open bar while America’s housing market was crashing, is not prudent. Using credit cards to buy bottles of wine and $140 dinners is not what we want from the IRS’s green-eyeshade brigade. Trust, what’s that?

 

 

.

[keepthefaith]

Crap, I thought the title said, "President Obama's weak."

 

Well played.

[Joe Miner]

I'm surprised he's not been sitting in a courtroom in FL watching the trial of his son's murderer.

[IDBillzFan]

I'm surprised he's not been sitting in a courtroom in FL watching the trial of his son's murderer.

 

You have to wonder if this trial would even be going on had Obama not sent Holder to Florida to investigate.

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 2, 2013 by B-Man

[B-Man]

More Executive Abuse of Power: Obama Stacks the NLRB

 

Cablevision has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) about complaints involving 22 former workers that were allegedly wrongfully terminated.

This battle between the media giant and the Communications Workers of America is hardly new information as they have been fighting for the past year, but this most recent move is telling specifically because of what it implies about the authority of the NLRB.

A different case, National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, a court is considering the idea that the NLRB’s members, or at least 3 of them, were not “validly appointed” as they were all Presidential appointments made while the Senate was on recess. The short of it is: this incredibly powerful government group that is required to have congressional oversight has been functioning for the last year with a majority of its members having no such oversight. This is known commonly as being “unconstitutional” and has turned a few heads and will likely now turn the Supreme Court’s as well.

But it’s hardly surprising that a president that has sought unprecedented executive authority, abused programs he’d previously decried as “too powerful” when he was a candidate, wielded the IRS as a weapon to browbeat political opponents, and used his authority to cover-up and otherwise protect his powerful allies when convenient, would then use recess appointments to stack a group that traditionally favors unions.

Think I’m being harsh? Here’s what Cablevision said in their press release yesterday:

“The role of Congress is to ensure a balanced NLRB and the Obama Administration bypassed Congress in order to stack the NLRB in favor of Big Labor. Two different federal courts — the D.C. Circuit and the Third Circuit — have established that the NLRB is illegally constituted and has no authority to take action. The NLRB continues to ignore these rulings, and we ask the Supreme Court to compel the NLRB to immediately halt its unlawful proceedings against Cablevision

.”

This is a fundamental fight over whether the White House has to listen to either the legislative OR judicial branch. Currently, they are out of the control of any other branch of government.

.

[The Big Cat]

B-Man, you should do this for a living.

[OCinBuffalo]

All this, and nothing about Fox New's role in forcing Obama to Africa?

 

I mean, come on, the man has been blamed for so much, and Fox News is doing all the blaming, so, isn't it obvious to you B-Man who's really to blame here?

 

Fox News has become so powerful(yet it completely sucks and no rational person should attend to it, at the same time) that what is Obama supposed to do against it?