Tag Archives: Barack Obama

political news, religious news

What does Bachmann know about End Times?

Michelle Bachmann must know something none of the rest of us ever imagined knowing.

The former Republican congresswoman from Minnesota seems to know that the End Times are here. They’re about to arrive. The world is about to end.

Who’s responsible for this? You get one chance at this one: Yep, it’s Barack Obama.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bachmann-end-times-are-here-thanks-Obama

I’m no religious scholar, but here’s my understanding of what my Bible says about the End Times.

Put quite simply, the End Times will come without anyone knowing it’s coming. It’s just going to happen. We won’t know the end has arrived until, well, it arrives.

She told a conservative radio host that the president is lying about Islam and about the war we are fighting against Islamic extremists. Then she added that the End Times are coming as a result of the president’s deception. Bachmann said she is excited about the possibility, she said. “The good news that I want to transition to is that, remember the prophets said in the Old Testament, they longed to look into the days that we live in, they long to be a part of these days. That’s why these are not fearful times, these are the most exciting days in history.”

My interpretation of Scripture suggests the End Times is a metaphor for each of our lives. If we believe in Jesus, then we’ll go to heaven to be with him when the end arrives. And I don’t believe you can predict when that moment arrives.

Then again, some politicians — such as Michelle Bachmann — seem to think they know everything.

national news, political news

Rubio looks forward … except for Cuba

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign launch Monday contained a lot of soaring rhetoric about the need to look forward.

The Florida Republican sounded the right notes, spoke the right words and paid tribute to his own life story, which is an interesting and compelling one.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/marco-rubio-2016-presidential-bid-116914.html?hp=t1_r

“While our people and economy are pushing the boundaries of the 21st century, too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the 20th century,” Rubio said. “We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them.”

Agreed, Sen. Rubio.

However, why are you locked into a 20th-century view of our nation’s relationship with Cuba?

President Obama is trying to breathe life into a bilateral relationship with the island nation that sits just a few miles off the Florida coast. For decades, dating back to the late 1950s, U.S. politicians have trembled in fear — or so it seems — at the prospect that Cuba would become a launching pad for Soviet missiles. Then the Soviet Union vaporized into thin air in 1991. Cuba’s Marxist regime continued on, repressing its people.

The United States maintained its economic embargo against Cuba.

Now the 44th president of the United States is taking a 21st-century view of U.S.-Cuba relations — but Sen. Rubio will have none of it. Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba, said it doesn’t make sense. He calls Cuba an agent of terror.

I’m all ears as it regards Sen. Rubio’s desire to look forward. I am anxious to hear the rest of his message as the 2016 White House campaign gets ramped up.

Let’s start, though, with refining the senator’s view of Cuba.

 

medical news, national news, political news

Obamacare lawsuit: Where does it stand?

Hey, it just occurs to me. There’s a lawsuit pending against the Affordable Care Act.

You remember that, yes? House Speaker John Boehner filed a lawsuit against the ACA, contending that President Obama didn’t have the authority to tinker with it through executive authority.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/obamacare-lawsuit/

He filed the suit after a lot of huffing and puffing about it.

Since its filing, though, some data have suggested something that foes of the ACA — aka Obamacare — don’t want to hear.

It’s that Americans are signing up for it. The ACA is working. Actually working. More Americans have health insurance now who didn’t have it before it was enacted.

Boehner, though, didn’t want to hear those silly thing. He said the president overstepped his constitutional authority by “rewriting the law,” a duty reserved solely for Congress.

I maintain the idea that the lawsuit is intended to please the Republican Party base that hates the idea of government mandating health insurance, even though it’s been done at the state level. Massachusetts, under the administration of then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, did so — and it became the model for the federal law enacted by Congress.

Several millions of Americans have health insurance these days. The lawsuit is out there. Somewhere. Waiting to be adjudicated.

The most fascinating political trick of the upcoming presidential campaign, meanwhile, may occur among Republicans who will vow to get rid of the ACA if they are elected — and replace it with … what?

 

political news

HRC really is going to 'hit the road'

I do not intend to comment on every little thing Hillary Rodham Clinton does as she launches her second bid for the presidency of the United States, but this development is rather intriguing.

She’s driving — actually riding — in a van to Iowa.

No fancy jet. No limo. A van.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/hillary-clinton-2016-hits-the-road-116911.html?hp=t2_r

This might be a sign of her attempt to connect with everyday Americans, folks who perhaps really and truly understand what it means to be “dead broke,” or those who struggle meet monthly financial obligations.

Clinton’s announcement Sunday that she’s running for president has been seen as wildly different from when she declared her candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

It was the absence of the letter “I,” as in the first-person pronoun that so many politicians are prone to use. Commentators noted today that she didn’t even mention herself until about halfway through her remarks. Might that, too, be a sign of newfound humility? OK, it well might be stagecraft, calculated to make observers like yours truly take note.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is fraught with some unique characteristics. Perhaps the most unique — as some have noted — is that she’ll have to put distance between herself and not just one president, but two: the current president, Barack Obama, and the man to whom she’s been married for nearly 40 years, Bill Clinton.

President Obama is now heading into the final turn of his time in office and he’s seeking to build his legacy. Former President Clinton remains arguably the nation’s most recognizable and political force of nature. It’s that relationship and its proximity to the Hillary Clinton’s campaign that presents the most potential trouble.

Hillary Clinton will have to demonstrate she’s her own woman, with her own ideas, world view and that she cannot  be overshadowed by the Democrats’ Big Dog.

But hey, first things first.

She’s going to climb into that van and ride through the Midwest to Iowa. It’s time to connect with folks out here in Flyover Country.

 

national news, political news

Is HRC 'likable enough' to get elected?

A young U.S. senator, Barack Obama, uttered arguably one of the signature lines of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign when he told fellow Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.”

I’m betting that Clinton didn’t appreciate the “compliment.”

Now, eight years later, she’s launching another bid for the presidency.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/12/clinton-campaigns-challenge-make-her-likeable/

And as the Wall Street Journal reports, her task is to make her “likable enough” to get elected president of the United States next year.

As the WSJ reported: “She needs to try to humanize herself, because in some ways she’s kind of become a cardboard cutout figure,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University.

So, the campaign begins anew for the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.

Many in the media refer to her simply as “Hillary.” Just a mention of that name and you know to whom the reference is being made. Does the first-name familiarity make her likable? Hardly. I continue to believe she needs to translate likability into authenticity.

She remains a political powerhouse. The strength, though, doesn’t always connect with voters in a tangible manner. Clinton at times appears evasive, which hardly lends itself to likability.

I will be among millions of voters looking for signs that she’s capable of understanding the problems, worries and concerns of average American citizens. If she does, she’ll prove she’s for real, that she’s authentic.

And likable.

International news

Partisanship gone too far?

Barack Obama could have made this argument possibly long before now. Heck, maybe he has.

But now the president says partisan bickering over the merits of the Iran nuclear deal brokered with five other great powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran has gone too far.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-partisanship-over-iran-deal-gone-too-225234380–politics.html

He spoke at the Summit of the Americas, where he has made historic inroads in restoring relations with another longtime enemy, Cuba.

Back to Iran.

The deal seeks to scale back Iran’s nuclear development program. It also seeks to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb. Republicans universally seem opposed even to talking to Iran about such a deal. Some Democrats have expressed misgivings too. Let’s throw in the categorical objections of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and you have the makings of a donnybrook over a critical U.S. foreign policy initiative that in an earlier time might have enabled the president and his loyal opposition to speak with a single voice.

Those days are gone — at least while the current president occupies the White House.

You had The Letter signed by the 47 GOP senators urging Iran to reject a deal, which they stated might not survive once President Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017. Yes, the letter sought to undermine U.S. negotiators.

I certainly understand the need for partisan principle to matter, to count for something. These issues of foreign policy, of difficult and complicated international negotiations need to above that kind of bickering.

Obama’s critics say he is guilty of diminishing U.S. standing in the world. Those very critics are doing that, and more, when they seek to ambush the president while he and his team are working to prevent an enemy nation from developing a weapon of mass destruction.

 

International news, national news

Cuba thaw makes perfect sense, Sen. Rubio

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is a Cuban-American cut from the cloth that prevented the United States from establishing a relationship with Cuba.

He’s among a shrinking core of Cuban-Americans — living mainly in Florida — who think of Cuba as a pariah state that poses an imminent danger to the United States of America.

They are wrong. So is the young junior senator from Florida.

Rubio: Obama’s Cuba thaw ‘ridiculous’

Of course, perhaps it is helpful to note that Rubio is likely to run for the Republican Party presidential nomination next year, so he’s got to find as much to criticize the current Democratic administration as he can locate.

I guess Cuba fits the bill.

Well, the overtures that both President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are making perfect sense in this changing world.

Cuba’s got a horrible human rights record. So do many of the other countries with which we have diplomatic relations. Cuba once was known to have designs on becoming a dominant player in the Western Hemisphere. Those designs were washed away with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Is Cuba a terrorist haven? Does it sponsor international terrorist organizations?

Come on, Marco. Let’s engage this former enemy and persuade the government in Havana to join us in making life more comfortable for the millions of Cubans who’ve been deprived of economic wellness partly because of a pointless U.S. economic embargo.

 

International news

Take Cuba off terrorist-sponsor list

I’m trying to remember the last time I read anything in the media about terrorists tied to Cuba.

Am I missing something? Has there been an instance involving a terror group caught plotting something evil ever being linked to the Cuban communists?

It’s the apparent absence of any such linkage that gives President Obama reason to remove Cuba from the list of nations involved in sponsoring international terror.

Let’s get real.

Cuba is a third-rate country that is just now starting to get its legs under it as the United States moves toward normal relations with the Marxist dictatorship. The county doesn’t pose the kind of threat this president and all his predecessors — Democrat and Republican — said existed going back to Fidel Castro’s takeover of the Cuban government in 1959. That was when Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States.

Obama and Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, met today at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama. They shook hands and chatted a bit in private. Perhaps the topic of this terror watch list came up.

The world is full of nations that pose an intense threat to the United States with regard to sponsoring terrorist acts.

Cuba isn’t one of them. Remove the nation from the watch list, Mr. President.

 

International news

Obama set to meet Castro

President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are going to attend a meeting together this weekend.

They’ll shake hands. They’ll talk to each other. They’ll likely exchange an idea or two about the changing relationship between their two countries. And much of the world will be hanging on every look, gesture and spoken word.

Is this a big deal? Yes. But perhaps not for reasons that some have given for it.

Obama, Raúl Castro get ready for historic meeting

This won’t be a meeting between equals. Obama is head of state of the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. Castro heads a third-rate, Third World nation that folks once thought posed some sort of threat to the United States of America.

Cuba never really did pose that threat. What danger existed essentially evaporated right along with the Soviet Union in 1991. Still, U.S. and Cuban relations remained frozen in time.

That’s changing now that Obama and Castro have agreed to proceed toward normalization. The economic, travel and diplomatic embargoes are going to end in due course. Cuba will get to become an actual neighbor of the United States.

The leaders will meet at the Summit of the Americas. They shook hands briefly at a memorial service for the great Nelson Mandela a couple of years ago. This meeting is supposed to signal the start of a new relationship.

Yes, critics chide Obama for ignoring Cuba’s human rights issues. Sure thing. As if we don’t have diplomatic ties with other nations around the world with dubious human rights reputations. Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China — they all come to mind. I believe it was President Reagan who followed what was called a policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa when that nation was operating under its apartheid policy that denied its black majority any rights of citizenship.

This meeting is long overdue. The Cuban Missile Crisis has receded into history. Raul Castro’s brother, Fidel, has retired from his lifetime job as president, is in frail health and appears to no longer be the commanding presence in the island nation.

The time arrived long ago for the nations to establish a formal relationship.

It’s good that Barack Obama and Raul Castro are going to that important step together.

national news, political news

No, Mr. Vice President; your boss was worse

Dick Cheney possesses an utterly amazing reservoir of gall.

The latest rant from the former vice president of the United States includes his “theory” that President Obama is trying to take the United States down “from within.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dick-cheney-obama-take-america-down

He calls Barack Obama the worst president in U.S. history.

There you have it. History is written by a vice president who, along with President Obama’s immediate predecessor, led the nation into a war in search of chemical weapons, but found none. They told us we’d be greeted as “liberators, not conquerors,” and we were wrong about that, too. They fundamentally misjudged the strength of the resistance within Iraq after the capture, trial and execution of Saddam Hussein.

And it was on their watch that the nation’s financial markets collapsed, along with the housing market and the automotive industry.

And he calls Barack Obama “the worst president” in American history?

He said this on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show: “I vacillate between the various theories I’ve heard, but you know, if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing.”

That’s it. Barack Obama wants to weaken the nation. He wants to reduce our influence in the world. He wants to encourage our adversaries.

I’m trying to find a more cynical view of any leading American politician.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s cynicism knows no boundaries.