Liberals with a Singular Focus are the Best

Sometimes you find a few unbroken eggs in a muddy pasture.  That appears to be the case in the following article by Gareth Evans.  He is a former Australian foreign minister who co-chaired the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation.  Essentially, he's one of those guys that thinks every country should just get rid of all their nuclear weapons and live happily ever after. 

Ok..fair enough.  I'll get to that fantasyland thinking in a moment.  Instead, check out how he starts off his article.

U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign-policy landscape is littered with deflated balloons. Soaring speeches, high hopes and great expectations have yielded minimal returns.

Across the Islamic world - from North Africa to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - we see fragile relationships, unhappy transitions, unresolved conflicts and outright attacks on the United States, despite Obama's case for a new beginning, movingly articulated in his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Israel, deaf to Obama's urging, is further from reconciliation with Palestine and closer to war with Iran than it has ever been.

Likewise, for all the effort put into improving America's most important bilateral relationships - those with China and Russia - ties with both countries have become increasingly tense, owing most recently to the Kremlin's intransigence over Syria and official Chinese behavior in the South China Sea.
 

That's pretty much dead on.  You won't see anything like this written in the US media despite the veracity.  In fact, this is an Australian published in the Prague Post while writing from Singapore which is the base for the Asia Pacific Leadership Network.

What I find amusing is that the author is stridently liberal.  Anyone who dreams of a non-nuclear world is hopelessly so.  The genie is never getting back in that bottle.  Only the delusional argue otherwise.   And, despite the liberal tendencies of the author, he is so focused on his singlular task of nuclear non-proliferation he overlooks his absolute evisceration of President Obama's foreign policy endeavors in the process.

What's received little play amoung the US media is that Obama has been dead set on destroying the United States' nuclear arsenal.  He requested that the Pentagon come up with a plan to reduce said arsenal by 80%.  This was a unilateral reduction.  Unfortunately, for President Obama (and Gareth Evans) the US general election got in the way.  You may recall that President Obama informed Medvedev that he'd have more flexibility after the election.  That was at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul.

Now...how do I know that Gareth Evans (despite his take down of Obama) is a liberal.  Simple:

But it is hard to ignore the huge constraint that an intensely partisan and negative political environment in the United States has imposed. Republican intransigence has precluded U.S. ratification of the CTBT, which would be a big international circuit-breaker, almost killed the New START treaty at birth, and has caused the bar for further negotiations with Russia and China to be set almost impossibly high.

Nor is there any sign that any of these positions would be modified should Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, become president. International concerns have been compounded - certainly for the APLN leaders - by the shrillness of Romney's statements on China and Taiwan, as well as his extraordinary identification of Russia as America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
 

Shrillness?  Is that what that was?  I thought it was an actual leader stepping to the plate and putting the Chinese and the Russians on notice that they will not be dictating our foreign policy as they have been for the last four years. 

Would Someone in the Media Please Acknowledge These Deaths???

I linked to the Yemen Post a couple days ago concerning the deaths of Ali Abdullah Saif Al-Aghabri and Maraim Mohammad Al-Zahri in Yemen.  Both were described as US doctors who specialized in cosmetic surgery.  One could deduce from that description that they addressed deformities presumably in children.  Although, that was not spelled out in the article. 

What I find unconscionable is that the US Media has not filed one story in reference to these two murders.  Why?

Is it because:

1.  It never happened?

2.  The victims were of some profession other than provided that requires a media blackout?

3.  Were they mis-identified as Americans?

4.  Or, would the reporting of murdered US doctors in a foreign Muslim country reflect negatively on President Obama's foreign policy abilities?


These murders, allegedly, took place three+ days ago.  Where is the US media?

Just How Protected by the Media is President Obama?

This protected (from Ace of Spades HQ):

Scandalous: White House Tells Contractors to Break Federal Law and Not Inform Workers They Will Be Laid Off; Further Tells Them The Administration Will Pay Their Fines For Breaking the Law
 

The media will ignore the Administration instructing privately owned defense contractors to hold off on necessary downsizing until after the election, and pay the penalties for such illegality with taxpayer funds. 

Congratulations, folks!!!  You are all co-conspirators because following the money will lead to you (provided you actually pay taxes).

Yemen: Armpit of the World

SANAA, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi apologized to U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday for the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa, as the death toll of the conflict rose to three.
 

That's nice.  On the surface, it appears, surprisingly, that the President of Yemen is sincere in his contrite apology for the attack on the US Embassy in Yemen.  Of course, you have to take it with a grain of salt, since  Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has relatives operational in Al-Qaeda.  Drone strikes by the US killed one of them back in February.

One of the killed leaders, Fathi Ma’wala, is claimed to be a relative of vice president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi grew up in the  Abyan Region, which is a hotbed for such jihadist nonsense.  Ronald Reagan used to say, "trust but verify."  I think we're past that point concerning political leaders, and heads of state in Middle Eastern countries.  The new motto ought to be, "You're on you own.  Enjoy, and don't bother us."

The attack in Yemen came as part of the widespread anger across the Muslim world over an U.S. movie insulting Islam's Prophet Mohammed.
 

Well, that's what the Obama Administration would like you to believe.  But, it isn't backed up by the facts.  

 

The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman. He is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Well, I suppose our president can't expect to be on the money all of the time, especially when he keeps blowing off his intelligence briefings.

 

Obama's Foreign Policy is All Self-serving

It's simple.  Please follow along, and you'll understand President Obama's foreign policy protocol.

Russia invades sovereign Georgia in early August 2008.  Then candidate Obama says this:

Chicago, IL -- "I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security
 

He made no mention of the sovereignty Georgia (our ally), and made no call for Russia to get it's ass back over the border.  McCain stated unequivocally, that Russia was in the wrong, and needed to get out of Georgia immediately.

Candidate Obama then took a look at the polls, raised his finger in the air to confirm that his initial statement was wishy-washy tripe that showed a complete lack of understanding of reality.  So, three days later, he popped up with another statement.  The new statement reflected Candidate John McCain's almost word for word.

The other day, the US Embassy released the following statement after a bunch of local yahoos attacked the Cairo location.

We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—

US Embassy Cairo (@USEmbassyCairo) September 11, 2012

The US Embassy in Cairo is a  Plenipotentiary Office, which means it has full powers to speak on behalf of the State Department.  The above statement was, indeed, an official statment of the State Department.  The State Department is officially a subsidiary office of the White House.  The statement, therefore, was a statement of the White House, and our president. 

As the White House did not address this statement for 16 hours, it is reasonable to believe that they agreed with it.  One only need look at how Obama handled to the Georgia crisis to see that this is how he operates.  The event occurs, and his handlers and he determine the political consequences of various response types.  The response must show the President in the most positive light regardless of the substance of that stance. 

The man never played poker in his life.

Media Sychophancy Requires an Amazing Imagination

CBS News had one of their political reporters evaluate President Obama's campaign promises to determine (in her mind) whether he held to his convictions.  The result is rather humorous in the steeped out Liberal bias she portrays.  Here is my favorite of the bunch:

"As president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power." KEPT

A natural gas pipeline starting in Alaska has made progress under the Obama administration, while the stimulus invested in clean coal technology. The president has also stepped up nuclear safety reviews in the U.S. and also invested in international efforts to improve nuclear safety.
 

The Keystone Pipeline?!?!?!?!  Obama has "MADE PROGRESS" in that regard?  I don't think so.  What he did was shut down the northern portion of that project under the guise of "further study being necessary."  In fact, all the way up until March 9, 2012 he was lobbying hard against allowing the southern portion to proceed.  22 days later, he was taking credit for TransCanada proceeding with a campaign stop in Oklahoma.   Incidentally, he argued against the entire project when he was in the Senate.

I, also, find it amusing that the promise from Obama was to find ways to safely harness Nuclear Energy (which we already have instituted, by the way)...and the CBS cheerleader thinks this is a fulfilled promise because the "president has stepped up safety reviews."  Ummm...apples in oranges.   The president isn't pioneering  ways to harness nuclear energy...he is increasing the beaucracy by having myriad due diligence inspections pepper the industry. 

As far as the coal industry goes....ask West Virginia how they feel about Obama's investments.  He is slowly (or not so slowly) cramming EPA requirements down their throats, and sabotaging the entire industry, just like he said he would at a San Francisco campaign stop that wasn't meant for public consumption.