Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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.

International news

Sanctions lifted now, Iran? Think again

The world must have been hallucinating when the great powers announced that framework agreement with Iran that calls for the Iranians to scale back dramatically their nuclear development program.

Many of us out here thought for sure the economic sanctions on Iran would be lifted after the Iranians complied with each step of the agreement.

Now we hear from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that he wants the sanctions lifted before he puts his name on an agreement.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/09/politics/iran-nuclear-bill/index.html

I must have been dreaming the agreement that was announced. How can the Iranian leader say with a straight face that the sanctions must go and then he’ll sign?

That’s how these things are supposed to go.

President Obama is facing a tough choice here. Does he stick with the agreement and try to talk Rouhani out of his nonsensical demand or does he possibly walk away from the deal?

Some on the right think he needs to walk away. Maybe, but not yet.

I think that the head of state of the world’s greatest military and economic power needs to tell Iran — through intermediaries, of course — that the sanctions are going to remain until the Iranians do what they’ve agreed to do. They’ve agreed to scale back their centrifuges and they’ve agreed to strict inspections from international observers.

If they comply with all they’ve agreed in principle to do, then the sanctions can come off.

Not before.

 

 

International news

Iran, North Korea 'agreements' draw comparison

Is history going to repeat itself with this “framework agreement” regarding Iran’s nuclear program?

Oh, man. Let’s hope not.

Critics of the deal reached with Iran to scale back its nuclear development program are comparing it to a deal hammered out in 1994 between the United States and another rogue nation, North Korea. President Clinton hailed it then as a pact that would make the world safer. A dozen years, North Korea detonated its first nuclear device.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/echoes-of-clinton-in-obamas-awful-iran-deal/2015/04/06/e6a6b44c-dc59-11e4-acfe-cd057abefa9a_story.html

The world isn’t safer, obviously.

Now the world is watching to see how the Iran nuclear agreement plays out. President Obama is using many of the same terms that his predecessor did in hailing the North Korea agreement.

Here’s what I think ought to happen.

The Obama administration ought to be sure to take every lesson learned from the mistakes of the Clinton administration and be double-, maybe triple-dog sure it doesn’t repeat them.

Iran is supposed to reduce dramatically the number of its centrifuges. It’s supposed to allow international inspections. It’s supposed to guarantee that it won’t develop a nuclear bomb and that it will use its nuclear program purely for “peaceful purposes.” It must comply … or else.

And the “or else” must be a stiffening of economic sanctions on the country.

What’s more, the United States and its allies — and I include Israel in this group — cannot take the “military option” off the table.

Will history repeat itself? Not if we’ve learned anything from what history already has taught us.

national news

Obama brings more joy to joyful day

The video attached to this brief post is about 100 seconds long.

It shows Barack Obama offering some prayers to honor Easter and what it means to Christians.

The video also demonstrates a good bit of the president’s humanity.

http://www.reuters.com/video/2015/04/07/obama-gets-crowd-laughing-at-easter-pray?videoId=363766546&videoChannel=1

There can be no doubt — none at all — that some critics will consider this video snippet to be a bit too light-hearted, too full of humor.

I see it differently. I see the president of the United States bringing a bit of additional joy to Christians’ most joyful holiday.

It made me laugh out loud.

International news

Time for Walker to 'bone up'

Scott Walker says he’d toss the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by the United States and its allies into the trash if he’s elected president of the United States next year.

To which the current president, Barack Obama, says the Republican Wisconsin governor needs to “bone up on foreign policy” to realize the foolishness of such a pledge.

Score one for the 44th president.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/04/07/397928604/obama-to-scott-walker-bone-up-on-foreign-policy?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fb_ref=Default

The sole intent of the deal is to deny Iran the chance to develop a nuclear weapon. It was a painstaking negotiation. It reduces the number of centrifuges Iran can use. It allows for careful international monitoring of Iran by inspectors to ensure the Iranians are complying the with the deal. It won’t lift economic sanctions on Iran until it does comply.

So, what are the spectators in the peanut gallery — such as Gov. Walker — proposing? Do we bomb the Iranians? Do we invade? Do we just impose more sanctions and then hope they will prevent the Iranians from doing what they damn well please with respect to nuclear weapon development?

The president spoke to National Public Radio about the deal. “I am confident that any president who gets elected,” Obama told NPR host Steve Inskeep, “will be knowledgeable enough about foreign policy and knowledgeable enough about the traditions and precedents of presidential power that they won’t start calling [into] question the capacity of the executive branch of the United States to enter into agreements with other countries. If that starts being questioned, that’s going to be a problem for our friends and that’s going to embolden our enemies.”

All this tough talk and bluster from those who oppose the deal go the heart of a concern some of us out here have raised about whether the United States should be speaking with a single, clear, strong voice regarding Iran.

Yes, Congress should be heard. However, let us not undermine the executive branch’s authority to negotiate in good faith — even with our enemies.

 

national news, political news

Beware of big money, former Sen. Hart warns

Former Vice President Walter Mondale once asked famously of then-Sen. Gary Hart: Where’s the beef?

He sought to smoke out Hart’s position on the issues that were driving the 1984 Democratic Party primary presidential campaign.

These days, though, the former senator is giving us plenty to chew on as he warns of the influence of big money — as in really big money — on the upcoming 2016 campaign for president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/gary-hart-hillary-clinton-2016-billion-dollar-campaign-116673.html?hp=l2_3

Hart’s target? Former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who figures to raise as much as a billion bucks to run for president. Hart doesn’t like that kind of influence. While he expresses admiration and respect for Clinton, he sounds like he’s leaning toward a possible alternative candidate for president — say, Elizabeth Warren or Martin O’Malley.

As Politico reported: “The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, he said, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience, noting that he and his wife mortgaged their home for between $50,000 and $75,000 — an amount that made a significant difference in his first campaign in 1984.”

Ah, yes, Citizens United.

That was the infamous Supreme Court decision that ruled in 2010 that campaign contributors cannot be limited in the amount of money they give. Why, it’s a free speech issue, the court ruled. President Obama then stood in the lectern at a State of the Union speech and scolded the justices as they sat right in front of him for their decision. Although the setting was inappropriate for such a tongue-lashing, the guts of what the president said hold up today: It is that money wields too much influence in the modern political process.

Those who suggest that enabling corporations to give mountains of money to candidates is simply allowing “free speech” do not seem to grasp that some speech is heard more clearly than others. Politicians are going to listen to those who can give huge sums of money more than they’ll listen to you and me.

Is their voice more important than ours?

That’s the kind of influence Sen. Hart is warning us about.

Gary Hart has found the beef.