Let's Hear a Big "Yemen!" for Obama's Foreign Policy!

Disaster.

Everywhere in the world one looks, the disaster that is Obama stares back.

One can see it everywhere.

US influence in Latin America has collapsed. Even old allies such as Colombia and Chile now side with the crazies in Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela against the USA. The Castro Brothers are having a field day with the inept US "negotiators," increasing Cuba's influence in the region as they show their fellow Latins how to tame the Great Imperial Power--one in an all-fired, inexplicable hurry to "normalize" relations with the murderous regime in Havana. Thus far, Obama's only "success" in Latin America was Operation Fast and Furious which killed hundreds of Mexicans and at least two US federal agents, and fed the false narrative of "drugs go north and guns go south." The only other policy that comes close is Obama's tearing down of the US border with Mexico and its policy of admitting anybody to enter the US who wants to do so . . . assuming they will become a ward of the state and vote Democrat.

In Asia and even Europe, foes and old friends are lining up to join a Chinese led and dominated "development" bank. Russia does whatever it pleases in Ukraine and elsewhere, including terrorizing Europe's airways with unannounced flights of military aircraft, and, let us not forget, openly aiding Iran's nuclear program. All this despite Obama/Clinton's "brilliant" Red Clown Nose "Reset" Button signifying a new era of positive relations with Russia. One wonders to what year that reset button connected? China, meanwhile, expands its naval power and tries to bully its way to the top, forcing Japan to undertake a militarization not seen since WWII.

Great chunks of Africa are now embroiled in a murderous war with lunatic Islamists. Whole African villages have been wiped out by Islam's followers; thousands of girls and women kidnapped, raped, and sold into slavery by Islamic madmen who take to the airwaves to boast of their madness. Our response? A hashtag campaign. Libya, with our eager help, has gone from a quirky madhouse to a bloody charnel house. In the wake of Obama's deposing of Mubarak, Egypt has avoided a similar fate only because the Egyptian army finally stopped listening to Obama/Clinton and acted against the army's old enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, bouncing Obama's darling, Mohamed "Jews are Pigs" Morsi.

For no reason at all, Iraq has been abandoned. It now faces one of two likely fates: 1) domination by Sunni murderers; or, 2) domination by Shia murderers backed by soon-to-be nuclear Iran (we'll get back to that).

Now, Yemen. Never a nice place, historically a source of random violence, prolonged civil war, and radical Islam, but one which for a brief moment looked as if it were on the way to some sort of existence as a nation. Once proudly listed by the ludicrous Obama foreign policy "team" as a "success," Yemen now is, well, another victim of Obama's foreign policy. Iranian-backed Shia rebels have occupied Sana'a and thrown the US and the West out of the country. Iranian proxies now pose a threat to Red Sea access to and from the Suez Canal. The only hope for some sort of recovery lies with the Saudis and the Egyptians acting to stem the Iranian tide from engulfing yet another country. Yes, folks, the very same Egyptian military that Obama sought to destroy might be the force that manages to block the Iranians in the Red Sea. It appears, as this is being written, that both Saudi Arabia and Egypt, without informing the USA ahead of time, have begun some military moves to counter the Iranian threat in Yemen.

As Iran expands its power in the region, what do we do? We conspire to let Iran have nuclear weapons. If you think the Iranians pose a danger now, wait until they have nukes--and make no mistake about it, they will have nukes if the Obama misadministration has anything to say about it. I have covered the proposed "deal" before (here, for example) and won't go over it all again; suffice it to say from all that I am hearing, it will be a disaster--there's that word, again--for America and the West. There is no clear explanation why a rushed deal is in the interest of the USA and the West. Squeeze the Iranians with sanctions and--above all--with fracked oil. Fracking will do more to curb Teheran's (and Moscow's and Caracas's) ambitions than all the "deals" worked out by John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry.

Our "leaders" have become so obsessed with this farcical deal, that they cannot or will not see the chaos all around them. This deal should be the lowest of the lowest priorities. This deal cannot justify the grotesque betrayal we have seen of Israel by Obama. In an unprecedented move of spite and hate, our President declassified US reports detailing Israel's nuclear deterrent. This attempt to undermine Netanyahu and delegitimize Israel's concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions is shocking and destructive. First, for the legalisms: Israel, India, and Pakistan are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is a signatory. Second, does Israel's nuclear program pose a threat to the USA or the West? Have Israeli leaders vowed to blow Iran or Syria or anywhere else, including Europe and the US, off the map? The sort of detail released by this jaw-dropping declassification will help Iran and other mad states in their drive for a nuclear arsenal. The disclosures about Israel and the leaked details of the impending deal with Iran already have led to dark hints from the Saudis that they might have an interest in developing their own nuclear capabilities. Are we going to declassify our reports on the nuclear programs of Pakistan, India, France, and the UK, too? In the meanwhile, as predicted before watch for a budding alliance between Israel and Saudis.

We have entered an era of sectarian warfare unlike any in recent times. Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, has made the world incredibly unsafe--and it seems to be on purpose as I noted a few weeks ago,

Obama hates America and Western civilization. He wants to replace them with some sort of horrid Third World culture in which the progressive elite will be in charge.

He shares his father's dream.

The Delusions and Malevolence of Our "Elite" Class

Sorry for the long break. So much going on, but so much of it the same thing over and over that at times I simply don't have the energy to state the obvious: America and the West are governed by an "elite" with a world view full of delusions and malice. The "elite" either is so deluded about the nature of the world, or so full of malevolence towards Western Civilization that, to paraphrase an "elite" darling and Presidential hopeful, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" The result is the same: disaster.

If you ever wondered what sort of dystopian future could and would befall the world without the civilizing influence of the West, wonder no more. We have arrived. This is the post-America and the post-West world once found in fanciful fiction, and now in the grim reality of daily news.

Where to start? Where? How about with The One? The World's Most Intelligent and Powerful Man, our own President Obama. As I wrote a couple of weeks back,

What we have in Obama is not a full-blown Muslim or a full-blown Communist. He quite simply does not have the intellectual sophistication to hold a fully developed ideology. He is a product of years of learning hate, resentment, and entitlement. He is a product of the grievance culture which dominates our "elite liberal" universities, "elite liberal" media, and, of course, "elite liberal" culture--listen to the speeches at this year's Oscars if you have doubts on that score. (See a piece I wrote several years ago, Marxism Mutates, which discusses the "new" Marxism.)

I wrote well before that,

Obama has become the incarnation of a troubling trend in our country that has accelerated over the past 40 or so years. He has become the head of what passes for modern progressivism: the alliance between tax-supported university faculties, lawyers, government bureaucrats, journalists, NGO "activists," and Hollywood. This alliance has promoted the politics of envy and resentment, and launched a sustained attack on traditional American values. Our country is now filled with the half-educated idiots who emerge from our universities with no real knowledge but with feelings of entitlement and resentment. We should stand in awe of people with PhDs regardless of whether what they say corresponds to the reality we see, because they know what's good for us. They are the "experts." < . . . > 

Obama has captured this movement and its view, and represents and promotes it better than anybody else in living memory. Unlike Carter, Obama is not incompetent in promoting his hatred for America's traditional values and in embedding it into our institutions, e.g., the ruinous Obamacare, the rapid expansion of the federal dole, the insistence on apologizing for our successes, the disastrous "stimulus" spending, the glorification of the "victim" culture, promotion of envy and cynicism, and denigration of individual effort and success ("You didn't build that!") That is the real threat posed by what Obama represents.

His hatred for America and the West seems to know no bounds. We see it in his domestic and foreign policy prescriptions and pronouncements. When asked recently what his greatest regret was for his presidency, it wasn't the disasters he has helped foment in Latin America, Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Nope, none of that. He regretted not closing Guantanamo on day one of his presidency. Nothing said about the economic and political disasters at home and abroad--including his murderous actions in "Fast and Furious"; no, his concern is for the detainees at the naval base in Guantanamo. He clearly feels we should have moved them to the US and given them their "full" legal rights. That's his concern, his regret. Yes, doing that would have solved it all. The editors of Charlie Hebdo would be alive today if he had done that. The Islamists would have stopped massacring Christians in Africa and the Middle East if he had closed Gitmo. No doubt.

And our Brilliant Secretary of State? He natters about Global Warming . . .

Obama goes on to express his disdain for America and global realities as he pushes making voting mandatory as the way to "transform" America,

President Obama, whose party was trounced in last year’s midterm election due in part to poor turnout among Democrats, endorsed the idea of mandatory voting Wednesday.
“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” Mr. Obama said during a town-hall event in Cleveland. “That would counteract [campaign] money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”

Obama went on, in typical infantile quasi-Marxist terms,

“The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups,” Mr. Obama said. “And they’re the folks who are scratching and climbing to get into the middle class and they’re working hard. There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls.”

He doesn't say Asian-Americans, or Mexican-Americans. No, he says "immigrant groups" don't vote. That reveals clearly the strategy behind the encouragement of vast illegal migration into the US. The vote would and will go to everybody, not just citizens. In effect, US elections will be decided as much in the state of Chihuahua as in the state of Illinois. "Transformative," indeed. Let's give the cops one more thing to harass us about; let's give the already politicized IRS the ability to impose fines on those who don't vote. Yes, let's make people who have no desire or interest in voting, vote. Why not require everybody to buy a gun and "comply" with the Second Amendment?

The disasters keep on coming. The Iran issue is so dangerous and so obvious, I don't know what more to say. Obama is opening the path for the Dreamers in Tehran who dream of the day that an Imperial Islamic Persian Caliphate will have nuclear weapons and threaten the globe's non-believers with the apocalypse. Obama seeks to throw our ally Israel to the wolves, and to embrace not only the lunatics of Tehran, but those of Hamas, too.

And our Brilliant Secretary of State? He natters about Global Warming . . .

Obama and his supporters insist on transforming our most basic institutions for the benefit of the gay/lesbian "one percent" of our population. Fundamental institutions such as marriage, adoption, child rearing, education, business, and even the military must be reformed to accommodate that "one percent," regardless of what that does to the vital functions these institutions perform.

Our first "mixed race" President has deliberately set back race relations by decades. We are heading for a racial collision of a kind we haven't seen in ages in the US. All this done deliberately and with malice aforethought by Obama, Holder, and their acolytes in the media.

Freedom is coming under some of the greatest threats we have seen since Woodrow Wilson's Sedition Act of 1918, or maybe even John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. We see the Feds moving in on the internet, on ammunition sales, and on political organizing. We see on college campuses the closing down of debate, the banning of unpopular speech, all in the name of furthering "critical thinking." We see "elite" professors writing garbage such as the following when discussing the recent flap over a racist chant by some dopey Okalahoma college students,

In a society of ever-increasing and deeply regrettable violence, sexual assault, homophobia and racism on our campuses, it is the first duty of a president to protect the safety of students. That obligation does not rest on the clear and present danger standard of the First Amendment alone, but also in affirmatively creating an intellectual and social environment in which pedagogy, critical thinking and citizenship thrives. 

"Sure, but what is the harm in a song?" This is your strongest point. Zealously representing their clients, plaintiffs' lawyers would most likely press it. In a societal vacuum, it might even win the day. In reality, that argument falters on the rocks of American history. In that light, it is arid, facetious and naive.

If sung in their family homes, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence would protect these boys.

Could there be a better justification for totalitarianism? The first amendment only applies in your home where it is protected by the Fourth Amendment. Ah, I see . .  . and that, of course, will be only until our "elites" decide otherwise . . . Hugo Chavez would be proud.

And our Brilliant Secretary of State? He natters about Global Warming . . .

That is the sort of "critical thinking" that dominates our "elites."

Nasty, nasty times lie ahead.

Bibi Defies Obama, Refuses to Go Away

As of this writing it seems that Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud is poised to head the next government of Israel in conjunction with some small conservative parties.

This electoral result will cause much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in the State Department and the White House which, along with other "progressive" regimes, apparently, shamelessly and shamefully, had been involved in efforts to defeat Likud.

The result in Israel brings to mind, again, an observation I have made from time to time (here, for example) that most often when the media is reporting an electoral outcome as too close to call, that means that the progressive cause or candidate will lose. We have seen it at home, e.g., in the various efforts to defeat Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and abroad, e.g., Scotland's independence, and we certainly saw it in the reporting on the Israeli election.

I hope it true that Bibi will remain Israel's PM for the sake of Israel but especially for the sake of America and the West. We need somebody who will stand up and ring the fire bell.

Kerry Admits Iran Deal is a Hoax

Well, well, well, and well, again. How the worm turns!

Our illustrious SecState, John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry, who made a name for himself by accusing his fellow soldiers of atrocities and hanging around with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris during the Vietnam War peace talks, is in a tiff because 47 US Senators had the temerity to send an "open letter," drafted by Senator Cotton, to the despots in Iran.

All that angry talk about the Logan Act from the Democrats! The party that played around with the Sandinistas, the FMLN, the Castroites, Chavez, and Assad, who repeatedly sabotaged negotiations on free trade, and on and on, is now upset because 47 US Senators had the nerve to remind Iran, and the Obama Misadministration, that the US Constitution gives a very important role to the US Congress, especially the Senate, when it comes to international agreements. Cotton's letter states,

[U]nder our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Wow! Is that treason or what?

Calling Attorney General Holder! Better go arrest all those middle school textbook publishers! They're giving away national secrets!

Maybe, just maybe, you'd think that our President, the World's Most Intelligent Man, as well as a Harvard-educated lawyer and self-proclaimed "Professor of Constitutional Law," might know of the Constitution's very carefully established separation of powers among the three branches of government.

Checks and Balances? Does any of this ring a bell, Professor Obama?

It must not, since this President insists that all government powers belong to him, e.g., see his immigration actions, and, apparently, that Congress is just a place for him to deliver his State of the Union speeches.

You can always count on Kerry to misspeak in the most marvelous and revealing of ways. Yes, the same man who openly acknowledged that we would deliver an "unbelievably small" strike against Assad, this while Obama pounded his chest and roared on about "red lines," now has undermined his chief, again.

In the Senate hearing, Kerry, as reported by CNN no less, said,

Cotton's letter stemmed from the false premise that any agreement brokered with Iran would be legally binding, though the letter doesn't use that language. 

"We're not negotiating a legally binding plan," Kerry said, pointing out that an eventual agreement would have the same power as the "thousands" of executive agreements between the U.S. and foreign countries that Congress has not approved. 

Kerry said that the letter is "incorrect when it says that Congress could modify the terms of an agreement."

Let's put aside the nonsense about Congress not being able to modify an agreement and not mention the amendments to agreements on trade, for example, introduced by the Democrats in Congress.

Let's focus on Kerry's wonderful phrase, "We're not negotiating a legally binding plan." What in the Sam Hill does that mean? What are we negotiating? A gentlemen's agreement? With the Ayatollahs who daily proclaim their intention to wipe out Israel and the West?

So, as we all thought from the start, and as Bibi so eloquently reminded, this "deal" is a nothing burger. A Hoax. Worse. It sends a clear signal to the Iranians that the Obamistas will not do anything about Iran's nuclear weapon's program, not even ask Congress to take a look at the deal. Iran will get nuclear weapons, and Obama is quite content for that to happen.

Quite literally, nothing is better than this deal.

Bad Hillary; Good Dogs

This Hillary Clinton email story gets weirder all the time.

She is lying, er, uh, "relating a non-operative account." When I worked at the State Department I had a personal email account with AOL and two official ones with State. I was issued an official Blackberry for when I was traveling. That Blackberry was hooked up to my unclassified State.gov email account. I also had a special log-in procedure that would get me onto that State.gov account from any internet-linked desktop or laptop computer in the world. No problem. We had very clear instructions on what was to go on our State.gov account and what we could put on our personal email account. The unclassified system at State had internet access; I could, therefore, access my private AOL account via the internet using the State computer. As noted, I could, using the special log-in procedure, gain access to my State.gov account from any internet-linked computer device in the world. The Blackberry was not authorized for use on the classified State account or for sending classified material of any sort.

This is not rocket science. The rules were very clear; we all understood them. The State email systems and the State-owned computer devices were subject to monitoring, and all communications formed part of the official record; we got told that right up front. In fact, every time the computer would come on, we would get a warning notice that we had no expectation of privacy and that the system could be monitored.

So we had this elaborate monitoring system run by State Security and nobody, nobody, nobody-- Bueller? Bueller?--noticed that the head honcho was not complying? Her stuff was off the books? This is simply outrageous. I find it hard to believe--impossible to believe--that no classified material was passed to or from the Secretary on her private email account. She is lying, and lying big time. In addition, I find humorous her claim that she subsequently and "voluntarily" has turned over to the Department some 55,000 printed pages--pages, mind you, not emails--and that should satisfy any quest for info. She refuses to make available her private server claiming that her private stuff is on there, at the same time that she claims that she has deleted her private stuff. Liar! Liar! Pantsuit on fire . . .   

Just as Al Capone got nailed for tax evasion, it would be supremely satisfying to see this lying, arrogant, inept, and crooked political hack go down for violations of email regs. Justice couldn't get her on Whitewater, her "creative" fund-raising, or for being an incompetent and destructive SecState, but maybe it will get her on this.

I am disgusted.

As I often do when I get disgusted by the political scene, I turn to the best things on earth: my dogs. We have been taking them to advanced training, and they are actually learning and having fun.

Here they sit, eagerly awaiting the start of class . .  .

Here, catching a few winks in the man-cave after a long day at school . . .

If only everything were as wonderful as dogs . .  .

The Clintons: The Same Old Tricks

Almost three years ago, I wrote that Hillary Clinton,

has taken the opportunities that fell into her lap, e.g., her playboy husband became Governor of Arkansas and then President, and ably used them to advantage, e.g., a Senate seat, almost the Presidency, and now SecState. As the First Lady of Arkansas, she played the role required of her: she laundered bribes for her husband. That is what Whitewater was about. That was her role at the Rose Law Firm: she would collect and launder the payoffs. She "made" a fortune in cattle futures, right? OK, when will you pay me for that bridge? (Note: The GOP was too stupid to explain the Whitewater affair, and accepted the media line that it was "too complicated" for the public to understand. My Foreign Service friends and I who had spent years in places where that was the role of the First Lady figured it out instantly.)

It, therefore, came as no surprise to see Whitewater on steroids happen, again. This time, however, we see Bill Clinton acting as the bag man. While his wife, Hillary, served as SecState, Ex-POTUS Bill, collected huge sums for speeches from a variety of foreign organizations, all with the rubber-stamp OK of the State ethics people. The Clinton marriage is a business and political partnership unlike any other we have seen in recent American politics. It is the American version of the Putin-Medvedev back-and-forth. It also comes as no surprise to see the muted reaction from most of the MSM.

In a further development underlining how the Clinton machine operates above the law, or off-the-books, we now see that the pant-suited SecState had her own very private email server installed at her house. She used this system to send and receive emails, apparently including official ones, and never bothered to use a State email address. This was a blatant attempt to avoid FOIA by hiding her correspondence from official records, and, most important, to hide her disastrous actions and inactions on major events--e.g., Libya, Egypt, Benghazi, Fast and Furious--and a violation of all sorts of laws and regulations on the security of communications.

This is a SecState with zero accomplishments except hiding that she has zero accomplishments.

EVEN the otherwise docile and compliant NY Times noted that,

As State Department lawyers sifted last summer through a new batch of documents related to the Benghazi attacks, they repeatedly saw something that caught their attention: emails sent to and from a personal account for Hillary Rodham Clinton. 

The lawyers, according to current and former State Department officials, were working to respond to a request from a specially appointed House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Libya. But they noticed that among the 15,000 documents they examined, there were no emails to or from an official departmental account for Mrs. Clinton.

Folks, this is a big deal. Any Foreign Service or Civil Service Officer who did anything similar would have run afoul immediately of the Department of State Security guys. Career termination and even criminal charges would have been very real possibilities. That Hillary Clinton was able to get away with this for the duration of her tenure is an outrage. Heads need to roll at State over this, and Hillary should give up her White House ambitions--yeah, right . . .

Hillary Clinton is a crook. There, I've said it. She is a crook. To conduct her crookedness, she relies on the compliance of a tight circle of sycophants, low information supporters, and the cowardly and complicit media.

Bibi, A Beacon of Clarity on the Hill

He came through.

Why is it that a foreigner is the only politician in Washington who makes sense on the Middle East and on the threats posed by radical Sunni Islam and radical Shia Islam?

Israeli PM Netanyahu delivered a powerful call to the American Congress to reject Obama's phony deal with Iran.

As the PM rightly noted,

Iran’s regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime was merely a Jewish problem. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world. To understand just how dangerous Iran would be with nuclear weapons, we must fully understand the nature of the regime. <...>

I’m standing here in Washington, D.C. and the difference is so stark. America’s founding document promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad. And as states are collapsing across the Middle East, Iran is charging into the void to do just that. <...> 

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire. 

In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.

So when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.

The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We must always remember — I’ll say it one more time — the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen. 

But that, my friends, is exactly what could happen, if the deal now being negotiated is accepted by Iran. That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them. <...> 

True, certain restrictions would be imposed on Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s adherence to those restrictions would be supervised by international inspectors. But here’s the problem. You see, inspectors document violations; they don’t stop them.
<...>

The second major concession creates an even greater danger that Iran could get to the bomb by keeping the deal. Because virtually all the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will automatically expire in about a decade. 

Now, a decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. It’s a blink of an eye in the life of our children. We all have a responsibility to consider what will happen when Iran’s nuclear capabilities are virtually unrestricted and all the sanctions will have been lifted. Iran would then be free to build a huge nuclear capacity that could product many, many nuclear bombs. 

Iran’s Supreme Leader says that openly. He says, Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount — 190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal and this in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision.

In other words, the PM is telling Obama, in a backhanded sort of way, that the President's labeling of ISIS as the JV is correct. The problem is that Obama is incompetent and unable to deal with the JV Team, and is yielding completely the field to the Varsity Team. In addition, of course, the Obama Team is guaranteeing the Teheran Team that Iran will eventually get nukes, but "gradually" and in a "non-frightening" sort of manner.

The ball is with Congress and the American people. We have to say to "No" to the Obama-Kerry sell-out. If we don't, then I believe Israel will say "No" in a much different way.