Obama's Turbulent European Vacation

National Journal   "With vague pledges and backtalk from Merkel and Putin, the president shows how far America's standing with Europe has fallen."

"President Obama's honeymoon with the world is over.
"What was it, exactly, about Obama's controversy-marred trip to Germany and the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland that fell so flat? Ummm, how about … everything?
"There were the snarky words from Vladimir Putin, who expressed an almost Soviet-esque distance from Washington in his views about Syria. "Of course our opinions do not coincide," the Russian leader said bluntly. There was the coded warning from Chancellor Angela Merkel about spying on friends, and her and Obama's continuing frostiness over the issue of economic stimulus versus austerity. Above all, there was Obama's vague attempt at the Brandenburg Gate to capture some wisp of his past glory by pledging vague plans to cut nuclear arms and an even vaguer concept of "peace with justice." "

Obama's Influence, Limitations on Display at G-8   "The president escaped public criticism of the programs during the G-8 summit. Merkel, however, says she plans to raise the issue with Obama in Germany, which like most of Western Europe has stricter privacy laws than the U.S."
US President Barack Obama repeatedly addressed Chancellor George Osborne as Jeffrey during the recent G8 summit.
"According to the Sun and the Financial Times, Mr Obama apologised to the chancellor for calling him Jeffrey three times during the meeting - saying: "I'm sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer"."
Remember how the left mocked Dan Quayle and President Bush for much less than this?
More here on this: President Obama seems incapable of going abroad without embarrassing himself.   "But good grief: the first obligation of a diplomat is to keep track of whom he is speaking to. One can imagine the hilarity if George W. Bush had referred to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister during his administration, as “James Brown,” "....
And the people around Mr. Obama are, well, kinda like that too:  Obama's Inept Secretary of Defense Asks Indian Audience Member If He's A Member Of Taliban
"Imagine the outrage if Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney had made a racist comment like that... But no, since this RINO Chuck Hagel is a member of the Obama Administration, the left and the media will brush it off as a harmless joke."

laughzilla  The editorial comic illustration features the French President,

Francois Hollande, the President of the United States, Barack Obama,

 and the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.

 

 

 

Tamerlan Tsarnaev memorialized at Mayors Against Illegal Guns rally

Yes, THAT Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Daily Caller  "An event held yesterday in Concord, New Hampshire by out-of-state supporters of Mike Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns movement turned ugly when a 2nd Amendment activist (who was protesting the event) was arrested. But buried in the Union Leader story was an arguably more interesting nugget.
"During the rally, supporters of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns read the names of those “killed with guns” since the Dec. 14 Newtown shootings — and Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s name was reportedly memorialized among the names of the dead. (Tsarnaev, of course, was killed in a police shootout.)"

Nanny Bloomberg Forced To Apologize After His Anti-Gun Group Names Boston Terrorist A Victim Of Gun Violence…  "Alex Katz, deputy communications director for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns campaign, said rally organizers relied on a list compiled by Slate.com of people killed by guns since the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., “and his name was on the list.” "

Avoid the Need for Spying Using This One Not-So-Weird Trick

Ann Coulter  "Well, of course the government is spying on Americans! Look at the havoc caused by American citizens engaging in terrorism.
"There's "American citizen" David Coleman Headley, who conspired with Pakistani military officers to commit the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that left more than 160 people dead.
"Headley's ancestors served under Gen. George Washington -- no, I'm sorry, Headley was born "Daood Sayed Gilani" in Washington, D.C., to a Pakistani father. Like your typical American boy, he enjoyed TV's "Happy Days" and murdering innocent people in terrorist attacks."

....
When we're referring to "American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki" -- provoking Rand Paul to carry on for 13 hours about Obama killing an "American citizen" with a drone -- the phrase "American citizen" has lost its essential meaning. We don't have a drone problem. We don't have a spying problem. We have an immigration problem.  

Our president, who art in Washington...

 

 

 

The ruins of Normandy: Unpublished color photos taken in northern France in 1944 show the devastating impact of the Allied Force's battle to defeat the Nazis in World War 2

UK Daily Mail  "A series of never-before-published color images of the devastation in northern France after the D-Day landings have been released by LIFE.com" "The battle-scared landscapes of Normandy in northwest France are sharply brought into focus in a series of never-before-published color images taken in the aftermath of the D-Day landings on June 6 1944.

"The five images were finally published earlier this month by LIFE.com to mark the 69th anniversary of the landings, a significant moment in World War 2 which resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control.
"The pictures show allied soldiers shifting through the rubble of buildings reduced to dust and entire towns destroyed by intense warfare with the Nazis."

Chris Matthews: Berlin Sun ‘Ruined’ Obama’s Speech

National Review Online 

"MSNBC host and Obama sycophant Chris Matthews blamed the sun for spoiling the president’s speech in Berlin today.
" “I think a lot of the problem he had today was the late afternoon sun in Berlin ruined his use of the teleprompter and so his usual dramatic windup was ruined,” Matthews said immediately after the speech. “I think he was really struggling with the text there.” "

Obama spoke in front only about 5,000-6,000 spectators, all of them invited guests.
"Fast forward to 2013, and many are now saying that Obama's reputation is "tarnished," by his recent snooping scandals, his extensions of the war on terror, and the hard luck realities of failing to deliver on all your promises."

 

Berlin Speech: 200,000 for Obama in 2008; Only 6,000 Today Well, 4500-6000, other estimates say.

UK Mail; What a difference 5 years make: Obama braves blistering Berlin heat to make speech before invite-only crowd of 4,500

Freedom needs to be backed by strength. Otherwise it loses.  "Otherwise we see what Leo Strauss called "the sorry spectacle of justice without a sword or of justice unable to use the sword.” Contra Obama, the lesson of 1953—and of the Weimar Republic, to which Strauss was referring—is that merely wishing for justice, and seeking freedom, is not enough."

Elbert Guillory: "Why I Am a Republican"

Youtube   "Louisiana Senator Elbert Guillory (R-Opelousas) explains why he recently switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party. He discusses the history of the Republican Party, founded as an Abolitionist Movement in 1854. Guillory talks about how the welfare state is only a mechanism for politicians to control the black community."
 

BREAKING: ABC SAYS WHITE HOUSE AUTHORIZED IRS-GATE POLITICAL ENEMY SCANDAL

Liberty News  "The Benghazi lies/scandal should alone be enough to initiate significant pressure on Congress to deal with Obama via their constitutional process of impeachment. The IRS scandal, however, should seal the deal. Especially if the following is true.

Trey Hardin: “I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.”

 Hat tip to Michael Benghazi Malinconico Conservatives Network

 Occasionally Jon Stewart lives in reality.This is one of those times.

Scowling Face of the State

 

'Audit the IRS' Tea Party rally set for today on Capitol Hill   "Two potential GOP candidates for president - Ted Cruz and Rand Paul - are going to be there. It should be interesting to hear what they have to say. Expect both of them to connect IRS targeting with NSA snooping - two potent issues for conservatives in 2014."

 

A Comprehensive Distrust of Government 

"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." --author and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

George Will; Scowling Face of the State  "[Lois] Lerner, it is prudent to assume, is one among thousands like her who infest the regulatory state. She is not just a bureaucratic bully and a slithering partisan. Now she also is a national security problem because she is contributing to a comprehensive distrust of government."

secretsofthefed.com

Signs and Wonders: Navy bans porn but misses the point

World Magazine  "The Pentagon horrified many but surprised few people when it reported last month that since lifting its ban on homosexuality, the number of sexual assaults in the armed services increased to an astonishing 26,000, and that many of the assaults were male-on-male. After all, when you announce “anything goes,” you shouldn’t be surprised when “anything” actually shows up."
....
"[Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council]"  believes “no one has done more to sexualize the military than President Obama.” He said, “.... look at the White House’s radical social policies and start acknowledging their role in fostering this dangerous, sexually-charged environment.”  

Organizing for Action gathers a whopping three people for gun-control rally in California

Hot Air  "This is a pretty decent illustration of the lack of enthusiasm on the pro gun-control side, especially in light of a nearby and tragic shooting spree fairly recently. I’d wonder if a protest of three Second Amendment would even warrant a news story, unless it was to mock the absence of actual protesters. So, here I am providing some newsworthy context to this reporter’s exceedingly fair treatment of three gun-control supporters. There were three."

Israelis size up John Kerry

Pundits hope for better things from Secretary of State Kerry, but say most nations know that he will not matter; that he is bound Obama's foreign policy. And that, the world is familiar with.

 

israelnationalnews.com

 

Charles Krauthammer asks of Hillary: Can somebody name one achievement she had in the four years that she has been Kerry's predecessor?