As the Obama administration crashes and burns, insiders begin to blame Valerie Jarrett.

John Fund

... "So how has she survived? Not only has she been close to the first couple for nearly a quarter-century, but she clearly makes the president feel even better about himself than he would anyway. Consider this quote from her...

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

"Journalists who contacted the White House this week and asked to speak with Jarrett didn’t get very far. Maybe she’s decided to follow the advice of Greg Hinz and lie low for a while. But if journalists really want a fuller explanation for how the Obama administration has reached its current low ebb, perhaps they should continue to follow the threads of the Jarrett string that were revealed this week and see where those lead."

VIDEO: Cartoonist Michael Ramirez says cartoonists have gone soft in the Obama era….

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit

"The Flipside with Michael Loftus offers a fresh perspective by taking on the flipside of the news, commentary, and pop-culture that America now calls the status quo. This episode features Michael's inaugurating Michael Moore into The Flipside Capitalist Hall of Fame with special guest political cartoonist Michael Ramirez."

Zoom ahead to the 11:00 minute mark for the interview with Michael Ramirez.

The evolution of the New York skyline

 

Hat tip to Walt Stier; Santa Maria, CA

Watters’ World : ACLU Edition

Jim Campbell   The folks at the ACLU may not have been representatives of the entire organization but it’s likely they are.  A great interview with Waters.
Make America a better place, send ACLU Lawyers to Syria or Iran.

Fox News’ Jesse Watters showed up at the recent ACLU conference in Princeton, New Jersey, to find out what members of the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) think about not only ISIS, but the war on terror in general. The answers were predictable. Here’s a sneak peek:

 

"Watters: “These ISIS members that are beheading Americans, what would you do with them?' ”

Entire transcript below.

ACLU member: “Nothing.”
Watters: “Do you think that America deserves being attacked by terrorists?”
Another ACLU member: “How else are they going to get our attention?”

"Watters played along:"

“Do you think if we listen more to ISIS, then maybe some of the terrorism wouldn’t be happening?”

"ACLU member:"

“They’ve got their own very extreme agenda. But we have people in this country who have their own very extreme agendas, very fundamentalist Christians.”
 

U.S. and Israel: An Icy Meeting

Patriot Post; National Security 
"On Wednesday, Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for the 12th time, at the White House. The topics of discussion: ISIL and the prospect of a nuclear Iran."
...
"But in his United Nations speech this week, Netanyahu also pointed out that Hamas and ISIL have a shared philosophy, making them “branches of the same poisonous tree.”...
The only person Iran truly has to fool is the president of the United States, and over the last five-plus years it’s become clear that the survival of the lone functioning democracy in the Middle East isn’t a priority for our president.

In Praise of Benjamin Netanyahu

"Not exactly a head-scratcher: spot the grownup."

 

... "This man, whatever his failings, is better able to articulate the global situation than any political leader currently in a position of power in any country by yards.  In fact, virtually no one else is even attempting to do it. (Tony Blair did for a while before he turned, but he’s not in Bibi’s league.) Netanyahu may not be Churchill when it comes to courage, but he is Churchill, or close, when it comes to a precise mastery of the English language, ironic since he is the prime minister of a Hebrew-speaking nation.  He is able to tell the truth about the important issues, when all others, including, notably, our president and secretary of State, are prevaricating or spinning, trying desperately not to offend the reprehensible, and he did it again the other day at the United Nations. (Full text here.) " ...

 

Krauthammer: ’2014 Will Be Remembered As The Surrender On Iran’

http://www.investors.com/editorial-cartoons/michael-ramirez/720032

Charles Krauthammer    'Jewish history relies on Netanyahu making the right decision'
 

 

"Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said 2014 will be remembered as the year that the U.S. “surrendered” on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"Reflecting on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the UN General Assembly on Monday, Krauthammer said the Obama administration’s weakness in its nuclear negotiations with Iran will put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the Israeli Prime Minister.

“ '[Obama] weakened the sanctions even before this round of negotiations,” Krauthammer said.
“So he weakens his hand. When sanctions were the only thing that went around the table in the first place.”

"Krauthammer said if negotiations do not succeed and Israel has the capacity to set the Iranian nuclear program back another two to three years, Netanyahu will act on his promise to take military action to do so.

“ 'The only thing that would prevent Netanyahu from attacking–this is a man who knows the weight of history is on his shoulders and he’s aware that Jewish history relies on his making the right decision–the only thing that will restrain them is if they think they do not have the capacity,” Krauthammer said.

“ 'I think Israel can do it. I think the assumption is it can do it, but if it doesn’t attack, it will be for one reason only: they thought they couldn’t do it.”
Keep in mind Israel is surrounded by these people   “ 'Here Only,” states the Arabic sign, which also bears a swastika and a picture of the Nazi leader raising the traditional Third Reich salute. “A salute to the respectable Egyptian peoples from the German Hitler.”

“ 'Hitler: Burns Cockroaches,” it reads, according to a translation provided to the Washington Free Beacon. The picture was first posted on the Facebook page of Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas."

Liberals as Low Information Voters

Roger L Simon

... " But we are surrounded by a generation of people whose ideas are stuck in 1968, though most of them were just little kids at the time and too young to participate. Nevertheless, being stuck,  they are loath to see what is going on around them. They are terrified of it, lest they suffer from alienation of friends and family, loss of work, even personality disintegration.  So they watch MSNBC and nod when some reactionary nitwit says the decapitation in Oklahoma was nothing more than “workplace violence” when the perpetrator had converted to Islam in prison only months before and posted beheadings to his Facebook page."

Piers Morgan: President Obama this week committed professional suicide.

UK Daily Mail    "Let me explain.

"There is a theory in politics that once a leader has fired 50 or more people from his or her administration, he or she is finished.

"The reason being that by creating so many enemies ‘outside the tent’, the tent itself becomes too deluged with poisonous bile to avoid sinking into a quagmire of back-stabbing ignominy

"Obama went a lot further than firing 50 people.

"He managed to single-handedly alienate 200,000 employees in the American intelligence agencies by going on 60 Minutes and ruthlessly chucking them all under a bus over the rise of terror group ISIS.   Full article

 

Andrew Napolitano:   President Obama is attributing the rise of ISIS to the intelligence community's failures in order to deflect criticism of his own incompetence.
I take issue with much of what Judge Napolitano writes in here, but he hits the topic head on with this last statement:
... "Yet, if Clapper and his spies so miserably failed to educate the president about a threat he now claims is real, why do they still have their jobs? They have their jobs because if the president fires them, they might freely speak the truth, and the truth is the president's enemy. They have their jobs because the president is so bad at performing his."

He can't explain the lapse, so he just keeps talking ; At work we used to call this dazzling 'em with footwork.

 

realclearpolitics

Reading list: Democrat voters have put a JV team into the White House

onemarinesview

 

Obama's Loose Lips    ... "Obama’s policies have made us weaker and more endangered.

"Have there been any Democrats who have criticized Barack Obama’s policy of “loose lips”? Have there been any Democrats who care about American national security enough to buck their leader? There are few hawks or eagles in the Democratic Party but there are plenty of parrots.

"Ponder the damage the President and his enablers have done when in the voting booth. Americans have the future in their hands."

"I am stunned at the immaturity of this administration. ... We elected a man as president who had no experience at anything."    Wynn continues to praise the business climate in China compared to the United States: "The regulatory burden in China is infinitesimal compared to the crap we get in America."   Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn

Lucianne posts these next three: A former intelligence operative pleads with Obama to stop telling our secrets.    "My colleagues still in the field are waiting, waiting for the end of the classified disclosures from this White House. They are waiting for the day when their fears that the Obama administration will reveal their sources and methods comes to an end. They are waiting for this day because this White House keeps putting their lives, their family’s lives and the lives those of those they protect in jeopardy – all to achieve something that does not appear to have any national security objective.

"Let me close with a word for our country’s leader: Mr. President, as commander in chief you are responsible to those whom you command. I humbly ask, on behalf of those who can’t ask for themselves, that you, in a classified environment share your strategic vision with your brave employees and explain to them how these disclosures contribute to it."

He chooses not to know, because he chose not to care.   "After skipping 58% of his daily intelligence briefings in Term 1 and 59% of them in Term 2, he went on 60 Minutes and blamed intelligence agencies for being caught by surprise by ISIS." .
.

http://www.investors.com/default.htm

The fact that the president chose to use the word “they” instead of “we” immediately drew condemnation from friend and foe alike, who saw it as the president’s attempt to pass the buck.

 http://www.investors.com/default.htm

 

Andrew C. McCarthy:  The Intelligence Community Strikes Back at Obama on ISIS

"The most famous of the classic blunders is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”? I don’t think so. I’d go with Never get involved in a blame war with the CIA. And that goes especially for lame duck presidents saddled with plummeting approval ratings as they head into the last two years of their terms." ...

Explain to me why this man is honored while men like Dr. Ben Carson, Justice Clarence Thomas and Col. Allen West are called "Uncle Toms"?

"The Final Call is a newspaper published in Chicago. It was founded in 1979 by Minister Louis Farrakhan and serves as the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam."


Louis Farrakhan Via Drudge.

 

... "Another method is disease infection through bio-weapons such as Ebola and AIDS, which are race targeting weapons. There is a weapon that can be put in a room where there are Black and White people, and it will kill only the Black and spare the White, because it is a genotype weapon that is designed for your genes, for your race, for your kind." ...

I associate these two, but am not sure why I do not hear of NOI people doing beheadings.
Member: Mosque Attended By Oklahoma Beheader Encouraged Jihad Against Non-Muslims….
After reading the above post, what in Farrakhan's teaching would not lead them to do so?  TD

On the chilling effect, from one of the chillers

Volokh Conspiracy

"Prof. John Banzhaf passed this along press release for me to post, and I’m very glad to do so. The press release gleefully embracing the chilling effect created by the FCC’s statements — “regulat[ion] by a ‘raised eyebrow.’” It stresses that broadcasters “fearful of delays or even failure to renew licenses” are pressured to restrict speech “without the need for formal actions,” partly because such delay “can hang like a Sword of Damocles” over the station and keep it from being sold or from borrowing money. The whole press release is, intentionally or not, a sharp indictment of the FCC’s power to control the content of speech (power that, if it can be used as to “Redskins,” can be used as to many other things as well, and indeed has been used as to other things). If the FCC enacts such a rule and I were litigating the challenge to the rule, this quote from the lawyer who filed the petition would play a prominent role in my briefs.

FCC: We’ll look into whether “Redskins” is indecent for broadcast

 

Obama Totally Clueless When It Comes to Predictions: Why Should We Believe Climate Change Spiel?

Voice of Lillpop   Full article posted here:

http://comicallyincorrect.com/2014/02/28/obama-foreign-policy/

 

When it comes to formulating government policy based on predictions, Barack Obama’s record is abominable!

He, it will be remembered, promised that ObamaCare would cover millions of heretofore uninsured Americans and simultaneously reduce overall healthcare costs and cut the federal deficit!

As we now know, ObamaCare has been an unmitigated disaster and has failed miserably to attain any of the goals which Obama espoused when pushing Marxist health care down the throats of a reluctant citizenry!

With regard to Islamic terrorism, Obama’s record is even worse: He repeatedly declared that America is not at war with Islam, patted his arrogant self on the back for decimating Al-Quaeda, left the tattered remains of Iraq to be devoured by terror-bound scavengers, declared the war on terror over, and, rather than keeping a wary eye on the Middle East, elected to pivot to Asia, thereby enabling the creation of the world’s greatest terror threat in human history, the unlovely embodiment of Islam, otherwise known as ISIS.
Domestically, Obama touted  policies that would result in the creation of “shovel-ready” jobs which, he later admitted, were neither shovel ready nor jobs.

On and on the list goes.

This president, Barack Hussein Obama, is blinded to reality by his addiction to failed progressive notions which have never worked anywhere--- and never will.

Given Obama’s lamentable inability to decipher reality from Utopian bunk and liberal spin, why should the American people believe anything he utters about climate change?