March 18, 2015

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Streetwise Professor posts on the strange juxtaposition of the president, who blew up the Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement because the Iraqi Parliament had not approved it. Now the same idiot is saying our legislature is not entitled to comment on his cave to the Iranians.

@libertylynx points out a very interesting contrast. The awful developments in Iraq over the last several years, most notably the rampage of Isis and the dramatic expansion of Iranian influence in the country, are directly attributable to Obama’s decision to withdraw all US military forces.  He did so after failing to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement with the Maliki government. This occurred primarily because of a particular demand that Obama made of Maliki: namely, that the Iraqi premier get his parliament’s approval of any agreement. Obama stated that such approval was necessary to make the deal credible and viable. He said legislative buy in was essential. Of course, this did not happen, and almost certainly Obama knew it would not happen. This gave him the pretext to bug out.

Fast forward 3-4 years. Whereas Obama had insisted on Iraqi legislative approval of a deal with the US, now Obama is dead set against letting the American legislative branch have any say whatsoever in a deal with Iran. So much for the need for legislative approval to give a deal credibility.

Obama obviously has no principled view of the role of the legislature in foreign policy. He didn’t want a Status of Forces agreement, so he insisted on Iraqi legislative approval because he knew it would not be forthcoming. He desperately wants a deal with Iran, so he adamantly opposes American legislative approval because he knows it is not likely to happen. His views on legislative involvement in diplomacy are not principled, but merely instrumental and change with the circumstances. …

 

 

 

Now we learn from The One that the rise of ISIS is George Bush’s fault! Is there a more contemptible person in DC? Pajamas Media has the story.

OBAMA: “Two things. One is ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion which is an example of unintended consequences — which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

I never saw such a classless American president. He knows perfectly well that President George W. Bush won’t defend himself, because he — unlike Obama — does have a sense of decorum. So Obama quickly tries to put the blame for his own failures on Bush.

This isn’t about left versus right, but about being a gentleman rather than a bore. It’s clear which one Obama is.

Of course he isn’t just rude, he’s also lying. George W. Bush made some tragic mistakes, but ISIS’ rise is all on Obama. He was informed about the group’s potential a full year before it started its reign of terror, yet did nothing.

 

 

Ron Christie writes on Ferguson and how, as always, President Agitator made things worse.

… The fact is, most Americans never should have even heard about a shooting involving Michael Brown and police officer Darren Wilson. Every day in communities large and small, criminals commit crimes that elicit interaction from the police. In the instant case, it is a fact that Michael Brown committed a crime in a small town on August 9, 2014, failed to heed Officer Wilson’s instructions, and was shot to death when the officer thought his life was in danger. The shooting never should have happened—a young man never should have committed a crime and never should have rushed at a police officer.

Sadly, this incident provided the perfect opportunity for those who think that America is inherently racist and permanently ensconced in a 1965 Selma, Alabama, mindset with an opportunity: an opportunity to declare that a racist cop had gunned down an innocent black youth as the teen shouted “Hands up, Don’t Shoot”—a fictional account that never happened.

On matters of race involving local police investigations, President Obama has not been shy about injecting himself into the narrative while shaping the desired outcomes. In 2009 when Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates had a disagreement with a Cambridge police officer outside of his home leading to his arrest, the president opined that the officer “acted stupidly.” Never mind that Mr. Gates didn’t have his keys and was thought to be breaking into a home by the police officer in question. What I found revealing at the time is that the president offered the Gates incident as showing how “race remains a factor in this society today” when the facts revealed race had nothing to do with the interaction between a professor and a police officer.

Turning to the ginned-up cauldron of race that is now Ferguson, the president was once again quick to offer his opinion on local matter on which he knew nothing of the facts at hand. …

  

 

Turning to another disgusting DC denizen, John Fund writes on Hillary’s cover team.

Hillary Clinton explains her use of a private e-mail account and a secret server to conduct State Department business as a matter of “convenience.” But congressional investigators are almost as interested in the fact that two of her closest advisers, personal aide Huma Abedin and chief of staff Cheryl Mills, also had e-mail addresses on the secret server. Were they also interested in “convenience” or intent on shielding their work from public-record requests?

For many years, the two women have served as Hillary’s inner-palace guard. In turn, she has gone the extra mile to keep them close. In 2012, Abedin was granted status as a “special government employee,” allowing her to collect a State Department paycheck while skirting disclosure rules about her holding down lucrative private-sector jobs — among them work with the controversial Clinton-family foundation.

Cheryl Mills’s link with Mrs. Clinton goes back even further than Abedin’s. The 49-year-old Stanford Law graduate joined Team Clinton before Bill Clinton was even sworn in as president in 1993, serving as deputy general counsel for his transition team. …

… The Post noted that Mills had “endeared herself to the Clintons with her never-back-down, share-nothing, don’t-give-an-inch approach,” the same style prevalent today in Hillary’s e-mail controversy.

And that style is also prevalent in the way that various officials seem to have exerted efforts to ensure that the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi won’t embarrass Hillary. Ray Maxwell, a former assistant secretary of state for North Africa, has told reporters that Mills was one of several Clinton aides who on a Sunday afternoon “separated” out Benghazi-related documents that might put Clinton or her team in a “bad light.”  …

  

 

George Shultz was lately learning us about what Reagan would have done on the climate. Steve Hayward begs to differ and reminds Shultz of a few things.

I love George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state and one of the heroes of the endgame of the Cold War. He began every meeting with a Soviet official with a specific human rights complaint about a dissident the Soviets had locked up, just to get under their skin and keep the pressure on. He was magnificent in his meetings with the Soviets after the shootdown of KAL 007, and in his one-on-one’s with Gorbachev in the Kremlin. He was the ideal complement to and instrument for Reagan’s Cold War grand strategy. His memoir of those years, Turmoil and Triumph, is well worth reading.

So it is a regrettable duty to disagree with his Washington Post article Friday entitled “A Reagan Approach to Climate Change,” in which Shultz argues that Reagan would have embraced a revenue-neutral carbon tax “as an insurance policy” against climate change because Reagan embraced the Montreal Protocol that eliminated chloro-flourocarbons (CFCs) in order to reduce damage to the stratospheric ozone layer.

Leave aside the carbon tax argument for a moment. One of the greatest mistakes of the climate change enterprise was adopting the Montreal Protocol as a diplomatic and policy model for greenhouse gases, and Shultz perpetuates this mistake, even as some of the smarter environmentalists (yes, there are a few) have come to understand this mistake. …

… I once heard Shultz tell the story that when oil prices fell sharply in the mid-1980s, and hence gasoline prices went down to something like 79 cents a gallon, he proposed to Reagan that it was a perfect time to embrace a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax that would promote conservation and reduce the federal budget deficit. Reagan, he recalled, smiled in a way that made clear to Shultz that Reagan wasn’t about to consider the idea for a second. And neither would Reagan come anywhere near a carbon tax. I’m wondering if Shultz’s pal Tom Steyer wrote this article for him?

 

 

Filed under “you just can’t make it up.” We learn from Power Line that one day last week the president and the first lady went to LA on separate f**king flights!!!!!!

It’s been nearly a month since Glenn Reynolds voiced his recurring refrain: “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN THING ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT.” Glenn reserves the refrain for links to stories reporting egregious overconsumption of carbon-based fuels by liberal hypocrites concerned about your contributions to  climate change.

Glenn’s refrain comes to mind in connection with the recent story reporting “Obama, first lady fly to Los Angeles on same day but take separate flights.” The linked story also touches on the costs incurred and would probably elicit a bonus reference to Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette by Glenn as well. Let’s go with the graphic below.

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