Steve Hayes: Excuses Excuses

Weekly Standard    "Since 2009, the world has been trying to make sense of America’s foreign and national security policies under Barack Obama. Allies and enemies, historians and scholars, the president’s critics and his supporters—all have struggled to define, or even discern, an Obama Doctrine. So last week, the man optimally positioned to elucidate the president’s vision sought to provide some clarity.
...
"That’s a tough sell. Our allies are confused and dispirited, our enemies are unquestionably emboldened. The Russian reset failed. The Asia pivot never happened. The Middle East peace process collapsed. The Syrian leader once embraced as a “reformer” has slaughtered more than 150,000 of his own people. Libya is a mess. Iraq is regressing. Obama’s own top intelligence officials acknowledge that al Qaeda is amassing territory and gaining strength.

 

"Rather than defend or explain these policy failures, the president chose instead to attack critics, real and imaginary. He challenged “critics who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” though no one actually thinks this. He rejected as “naïve and unsustainable” any “strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” despite the fact that there are no advocates for such a strategy."

Emphasis added.

Shinseki resigns after VA scandal

WaPo    "President Obama said Friday he accepted the resignation of embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki.

"He made the announcement shortly after Shinseki apologized publicly Friday for what he called an “indefensible” lack of integrity among some senior leaders of the VA health-care system and announced several remedial steps, including a process to remove top officials at the troubled VA medical center in Phoenix."

 

From the AP via CNS   ... "Those attending Shinseki's speech in a downtown Washington hotel were overwhelmingly friendly, supportive because of his work in sharply decreasing homelessness among veterans. Shinseki at one point noted that the number of homeless veterans has fallen by nearly 25 percent since 2013. The audience gave him a long, standing ovation, whistling and hooting, when he entered the room and again before and after he spoke."

Don't get too excited until we find out what type of person Obama picks for a replacement.

Left pushes 'trigger warnings' in college classrooms

David Limbaugh    "Have you heard about “trigger warnings,” the latest thought-control lunacy that has found its way onto college campuses? I weep for our children as they try to navigate the insanity in our society fronting as being protective of their interests.

"Trigger warnings are disclaimers that are attached to literature or other content to alert students to potentially traumatic subject matter the literature may contain. The most common types of warnings to date have reportedly involved rape, sexual abuse and mental illness.

"Until recently, the warnings were mostly on feminist-oriented Internet message boards and blogs, but now they’ve gravitated to some of our universities, many of which never found a kooky idea they didn’t embrace." ...

"In addition to expanding their jurisdictional scope, they have also increased in their range of forbidden topics. In many venues, trigger warnings now apply to all kinds of isms – “racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism and other issues of privilege and oppression,” as exemplified by an Oberlin College document concerning triggers."  

Political correctness has taken on frightening proportions.
Video: Dartmouth Student Runs Over Free Speech   "FIRE’s newest video features Dartmouth College student Robert Smith, who talks about the afternoon a fellow Dartmouth student ran over his organization’s pro-life display with his car. The ironic twist? The car was sporting a “Coexist” bumper sticker on the back."

UCI students demand punishment for ‘racist’ fundraiser because students wore grass skirts and coconut bras

‘Hump Day’ event cancelled after students claim bringing a camel to campus was racist

 Silencing U: Five Outrageous Cases of Campus Censorship  

Alan Caruba: The Slow, Sure Death of "Climate Change" Lies

http://terrellaftermath.com/    

Warning Signs    ... "Obama is on record saying that climate change “once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present” and is “affecting Americans right now.” Climate change as studied by climatologists is measured in terms of centuries whereas the weather is what is happening today. It has been happening before and since the rise of civilization. Obama’s claim that “climate-related changes are outside of recent experience” and “have become more frequent and/or intense” is a lie from start to finish."

 

"Climate Change Reconsidered II devoted to biological impact features scientific studies that conclude: ..."

 

Mr. Caruba is an advisor to "The Heartland Institute, a non-profit market-based think tank, responded by creating the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and by sponsoring a series of international conferences".

Compare And Contrast: Obama Vs. Bush’s Reception At West Point…

Nice Deb   "Here is what the military thinks of  a president who abandons a Marine held in a Mexican prison for taking a wrong turn, neglects the VA, shuts out veterans from national memorials during shut-down theater, forces suicidal RoE on the military, lies about Benghazi, takes full credit for killing Osama Bin Laden after preparing to blame the military if anything went wrong, and then leaks information that leads to Navy Seal deaths, and then sends their parents form-letter condolence notes signed with an auto-pen:" ...

Weasel Zippers
"Obama’s icy reception (first 15 seconds):"

 

"Bush in 2008 getting a standing ovation, having to ask them to sit down (first 35 seconds):"

 

Back to the Nice Deb article above:    "Wow, his speech stunk so bad, Obama even lost the Washington Post editorial board: At West Point, President Obama binds America’s hands on foreign affairs:

PRESIDENT OBAMA has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men...

The Left Doesn’t Really Believe in Climate Change

Ricochet

 

... "Every time a real-world solution is provided to a promised calamity, leftist leaders move the goalposts. To be sure, many well-meaning parishioners have bought the con and piously observe the demanding rituals of earth worship. But the high priests still jet around the globe, chasing checks from energy tycoons to build monstrous mansions along doomed coastlines.

"That’s because the Left doesn’t really believe in climate change. Their true religion is raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and reducing national sovereignty. Climate change is just a temporary excuse to achieve those ends."

Alan Caruba: The Regulatory Death of Energy in America

Warning Signs

 

"Before President Obama took office in 2009, the amount of electricity being produced by coal-fired utilities was approximately fifty percent of the total. Today it is approximately forty percent and, when the Environmental Protection Agency regulations take effect as of June 2, more such utilities are likely to close their doors. The basis for the regulations is utterly devoid of any scientific facts." ... 

...

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on record saying that the President’s bogus “climate change” policy could cost the U.S. economy $50 billion a year and force more than a third of coal-fired plants to close by 2030. The Heritage Foundation says “The plan will drive up energy prices for American families and businesses without making a dent in global temperatures.”

"This is a form of regulatory death for the nation and comes straight out of the Oval Office of the White House."

Maya Angelou Gushes Over US-Flag-Burning Palestinian Terrorist Rachel Corrie

Debbie Schlussel  ... "Only a narcissist like anti-American, anti-Israel bigot Maya Angelou would think anyone wants to hear her read from an e-mail from anti-American, anti-Israel bigot Rachel Corrie, who was part of the Palestinian terrorist group International Solidarity Movement (which aided Al-Qaeda terrorists and gave HAMAS terrorists a place to sleep the night before they blew up Mike’s Bar in Tel Aviv, Israel." ...

Below: Rachel Corrie Burning a Facsimile of the American Flag for Smiling Palestinian Muslim Kids in Gaza . . .

 

 "In case you aren’t familiar with Rachel Corrie, she was an America-hating flag burner who was in love with Islam and her Palestinian Islamic terrorist friends for whom she was working. She died when she was accidentally run over by a bulldozer while she was attempting to stop Israelis from knocking down homes shielding tunnels through which her terrorist friends transported weapons and bombs to kill innocent civilians." (some excerpts I felt were unfortunate were deleted from Ms. Schlussel's comments)

 

Maya Angelou’s Students: “Worst Professor EVER! Insults Students, Conceited Creep!”; Gave Her Horrible Ratings   "I’ve already told you what a racist, bigoted, anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Marxist the late Maya Angelou was. But, predictably, she sucked as a professor, too. The pretentious Angelou, who never went to college (and may not have even graduated from high school), “taught” (if you can call it that) English at Wake Forest University. Check out what her students had to say about her (one of them noted that she often began class by speaking in Arabic–strange . . . for an ENGLISH class)."...

If you like the VA, you'll love Obamacare

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/05/branco-cartoon-nothing-to-see-here/

After 100 Years, Europe’s Landscape Is Still Scarred by World War I

100 years after the Battle of Verdun, its land—once a quiet stretch of French farmland—

remains scarred from explosions.

"Even today, a century after the start of the Great War, the countryside still bears scars. In this image by Irish landscape photographer Michael St. Maur Sheil at the site of the Battle of the Somme, in northern France, you can trace grass-covered trenches and pockmarks from exploded bombshells. More than a million men were wounded or killed in the battle, the first major British offensive of the war. “The Germans had been sitting in a deep dugout excavated into the chalk rock,” Sheil says. “British soldiers advancing across the flat landscape were an easy target.” His exhibition, “Fields of Battle—Lands of Peace,” now on display in Paris along the wrought-iron fence of Luxembourg Gardens and later touring the United Kingdom, includes 79 contemporary photographs of World War I battlefields—the artist’s attempt to document the enduring legacy of the war on the landscape."

 

Nearly 70 feet deep, the Lochnagar Crater was formed after an explosive-packed mine was detonated during the Battle of the Somme.

The tiny village of Butte de Vaquois once stood on a hilltop, and was destroyed after three years of furious mining blew away its summit.

More on this last picture here.

Slideshow: World War I in the Trenches

VA Scandal Shows How Government Works

Forbes  "I had to go to the local department of driver services office for a driver’s license renewal this week. While the lady I dealt with was quite helpful and completed the renewal in less than five minutes, I first had to wait nearly two hours.  There were about fifty people waiting and at various times either two or three people working to help them. A normal business would have more employees to help the customers because in a normal business more customers is a good thing. With government in charge, it makes no difference and that is the problem."

"In a for-profit business, serving customers are how one makes money and it is important to keep customers happy. Customers do not like waiting, so businesses work hard to avoid excessive waiting by the customers. They do this in order to make more profit. Government agencies do not have a profit motive. The workers and supervisors have no reason to care about their “customers” except their own pride in doing a good job or perhaps hope of a promotion."

This should sum it all up very well:
"Government agencies like the VA deliver bad service because they have no incentive to do any better. As explained in my e-book, Ending the Era of the Free Lunch, government employees see the politicians and others in charge of their budget as the customer, not the citizens who they are supposed to be serving. "

Did you get that?

politicalincorrectnessrunamuck

Ann Coulter: Don't Stigmatize Murderers!

Townhall

 

... "A family friend, Simon Astaire, described Rodger's flat affect, common to schizophrenics, saying he "couldn't look at you straight in the eye and looked at your feet. It was unbearable."

"It's hard to feel sorry for a mass murderer, but it was cruel to Elliot Rodger to allow him to refuse medication and turn himself into a monster. It was beyond cruel to his innocent victims -- as well as the other victims of psychopathic killers. But liberals are more worried about "stigmatizing" the mentally ill than the occasional mass murder."

 

Earlier in this column, Ms. Coulter snarkily looks at the murderer's delusions of grandeur:

 

Rodger says of himself:

-- "I saw myself as a highly intelligent and magnificent person who is meant for great things."
-- "Becoming a multimillionaire at a young age is what I am meant for."
-- "I am like a god."
-- "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal."
(No -- wait ... Last one was Obama.)