[CARTOON] The Obama Recovery

Via: Western Journalism

Obama's 'Better Ideas' by Ed Lasky

When Republicans dared to question Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign he warned them to stop criticizing him. He sent a shot across the bow:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

He confirmed his animus whenever he felt he was being dissed -- in other words, quite often, since he has a very thin skin.

After he won the presidency, he “joked” that he would sic the IRS on Arizona State University when Arizona State University withdrew their early 2009 offer to give him an honorary degree because they belatedly  realized he had done far too little to merit such an honor. One wished the Nobel Peace Prize Committee had shown an equal level of intelligence, but Obama not being George Bush -- and not being a Republican -- was enough rationale for them.

He also has continually mocked and insulted political opponents and, for that matter, many millions of Americans. He is the Snarker-in-Chief.  His “joke” about ASU became less funny when his IRS, his FBI and his Department of Justice targeted political opponents. He does not “lead from behind” when his feelings are hurt or his political future may suffer. He is incapable of developing a strategy to deal with Islamic terrorists but is quite capable of developing a strategy when his career is at stake.

Has he devoted the same attention or forcefulness when dealing with Islamic terrorists -- America’s enemies?

What has been his approach?

Barack Obama has recently declared that “ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas.” Or, as New York Post columnist Benny Avni phrased it in the title to a recent column, “President Obama brings a mouth to a knife fight.”

Avni writes:

“Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas.”

Add that, along with “leading from behind” and disappearing “red lines,” to the list of gems that will forever define President Obama’s era in national security That line, from Obama’s televised Pentagon visit Monday on his administration’s anti-ISIS strategy, quickly became a social-media meme.Can we beat ISIS by presenting “a more attractive and more compelling vision”? That’s how Obama put it while assessing progress in our undeclared, undefined non-war against a nonstate that has nothing to do with Islam (and yet kicks our ass all over the place).Come on. This isn’t Debate Club.

Obama also said this is a “long-term campaign,” meaning that he has pushed responsibility for dealing with them to future presidents. He absolves himself of judgment for his weak-kneed performance against them (recall, he has “no strategy” to deal with them). So he cannot deal with even a “JayVee” team.

Is Barack Obama a powderpuff president?

Were the Nazis defeated by better ideas? Was the Soviet Union? Didn’t Barack Obama boast that he was a “student of history”? In the world of free information, western liberal ideas are pervasive. They are not “better ideas” to Islamic extremists who hate much of the West for those very ideas. Talk therapy won’t work with them. Perhaps Obama can call for a collegial symposium to hash out differences of opinion between the beheaders and representatives of the freedom and liberty-loving West.

Barack Obama has the world’s biggest megaphone and operates on the world’s biggest stage. What better ideas has he been propounding over the years? Has he been helping or hurting the West and its battle over better ideas?

Obama’s Better Ideas

What have Muslims been hearing from Barack Obama for years? Has he been a proponent of better ideas? Has he been proclaiming the wonders of America and of the West?

No.

Via: American Thinker

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Are You a #ProudAmerican? Here's How to Share Your Pride!

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Are you Proud American? Show your pride and send Fox News your pictures on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using #Proud American !

TIto Alvarez

@titoalva51

getting ready to celebrate memorial weekend!. Thanks to the heroes who died while serving the best country in the world.#ProudAmerican

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Fox News Opinion

@fxnopinion

The day President Bush's tears spilled onto a Marine's face at Walter Reed ow.ly/NjnNn #ProudAmericanpic.twitter.com/w9wT1h1jMN

Via: Fox News

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Iraq’s Decline into Chaos Traces Back to 2011, Not 2003 by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in free fall. It gets worse. The Gulf States’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief.

Note: “were,” not “are.” We are scraping bottom. Following six years of President Obama’s steady and determined withdrawal from the Middle East, America’s standing in the region has collapsed. And yet the question incessantly asked of the various presidential candidates is not about that. It’s a retrospective hypothetical: Would you have invaded Iraq in 2003 if you had known then what we know now? RELATED: Obama’s Ludicrous Middle East Policy First, the question is not just a hypothetical, but an inherently impossible hypothetical. It contradicts itself. Had we known there were no weapons of mass destruction, the very question would not have arisen. The premise of the war — the basis for going to the U.N., to the Congress, and, indeed, to the nation — was Iraq’s possession of WMD in violation of the central condition for the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War. No WMD, no hypothetical to answer in the first place. Second, the “if you knew then” question implicitly locates the origin and cause of the current disasters in 2003. As if the fall of Ramadi was predetermined then, as if the author of the current regional collapse is George W. Bush.

Via: National Review

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6 Ways Syria 2013 Isn’t Iraq 2003

An American president says a Middle Eastern country has weapons of mass destruction. He builds a “coalition of the willing” for a military strike against said country.

Sound familiar?

It could be President Barack Obama in 2013 or President George W. Bush in 2003, or so fear liberal Democrats leery of getting involved in yet another war in the Middle East.

“While the use of chemical weapons is deeply troubling and unacceptable, I believe there is no military solution to the complex Syrian crisis,” Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who famously was the only member to vote against authorizing the war in Afghanistan, said Tuesday in a statement on her Facebook page. “Congress needs to have a full debate before the United States commits to any military force in Syria — or elsewhere.”

But Obama, who ran on a platform in 2008 of ending Bush’s wars in the Middle East, isn’t Bush, and there are important distinctions between the two scenarios. Here are six ways Syria 2013 isn’t Iraq 2003:

Via: Time Magazine

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American Workers Collecting Federal Disability Hits Another Record High

(CNSNews.com) - The number of American workers collecting federal disability insurance benefits hit yet another record high in October, according to the Social Security Administration.

This month 8,803,335 disabled workers are collecting benefits, up from the previous record of 8,786,049 set in September.

In February 2009, the first full month after President Barack Obama took office, there were 7,469,240 workers collecting federal disability insurance. Thus, so far in Obama’s term, the number of workers collecting disability has increased by 1,334,095. That works out to a net increase of about 29,646 per month (1,334,095 divided by 45 months), or an average increase of about 975 per day (1,334,095 divided by 1,369 days).

During George Bush’s eight years as president, the number of workers collecting federal disability insurance increased by 2,375,258, rising from 5,067,119 in February 2001 to 7,442,377 in January 2009. That equaled an average net increase of about 24,742 per month and 813 per day. In Bush’s second term alone, the number of workers on disability increased by 1,198,575, equaling an average monthly increase of about 24,970 and an average daily increase of about 820.

Via: CNS News

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