Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news, political news, Sports news

Congress to look into NFL conduct? C'mon!

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has opened the door for yet another congressional spectacle in which lawmakers will seek to call attention to a problem that should be solved by someone else.

Domestic violence is the issue of the day.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said today that the National Football League’s response to the Ray Rice scandal — he punched his then-fiancée unconscious, remember? — has been “outrageous.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/09/gillibrand-hearings-after-ray-rice-incident-possible-195428.html?hp=r1

So, what’s Congress going to do about it?

Gillibrand thinks hearings are possible. To what end?

I think I know. The end will be to allow senators to make speeches, to get their names into print, their faces on TV and they’ll be able to express justifiable outrage at the way the NFL has handled these cases involving players striking the women in their lives.

Give me a break.

Congress has many more, and much larger, fish to fry — pardon the expression — than butting into the business of the NFL.

Yes, the league has a serious image problem. The owners need to hold Commissioner Roger Goodell accountable for the way he has handled the Rice matter. Goodell does work for the owners, who will need to decide whether the commissioner keeps his job.

The NFL already has launched an independent investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who vows to be thorough in his probe and plans to reveal his findings to the public the moment he has assembled all the facts in the case.

Let’s be clear: The domestic violence crisis in the NFL is a serious burden for the league to bear. It must make these offenders accountable and they must pay for the horrible acts of violence they commit. That’s within the NFL’s purview.

Congress has to worry about whether to approve air strikes in Syria; it has to look for ways to ensure that Americans are safe from terrorists; it must decide whether to act on the myriad programs proposed by President Obama, but which have been stuck in the congressional gridlock.

It need not conduct show hearings for the purpose of allowing elected politicians to make spectacles of themselves.

International news, national news

Coalition building … then and now

James Baker III is a great American who’s served with honor over many years as secretary of state, secretary of commerce and White House chief of staff.

It was his job at the State Department that has brought him into the discussion over how President Obama should handle the fight against the Islamic State.

Baker appeared today on Meet the Press and expressed — no surprise there — misgivings about Obama’s plan to fight ISIL. Specifically, Baker questioned the ability of the president to gather the coalition needed to destroy the terrorists. He compared the latest coalition-building plan to the effort launched in 1990 in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War.

I have great respect for Baker, but the comparison isn’t entirely apt.

Baker was tasked with recruiting nations to aid in the ousting of Iraqi forces that invaded Kuwait, the oil-rich emirate. The mission was clear and simple: Oust the Iraqis from Kuwait using maximum military force.

President George H.W. Bush ordered the deployment of 500,000 American troops. Baker persuaded allies to send in another 200,000 troops. The allies — including the British, French and, oh yes, the Syrians — sent troops into combat to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces.

The task before Barack Obama, according to Baker, is to persuade Sunni Muslim nations to actually aid in a fight that hasn’t yet been defined. The president won’t commit ground troops; Baker believes we need to send special operations forces into Syria and Iraq to aid in locating targets for the air campaign that Obama has planned.

My point here is that the enemy isn’t nearly as clearly defined as the enemy was in Kuwait. Baker knows that as well. The Muslim nations need to have a clear mission, as do Americans who are weary of sending young warriors back into battle.

The conflict we’re entering now is infinitely more complicated than the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis.

Can it be done? Yes. With great care.

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Rand Paul: unfit for presidency

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Sen. Rand Paul has demonstrated the kooky trait that seems to endear him to some Republicans but demonstrates why he is unfit to sit in the Oval Office of the White House.

The Kentucky Republican said this week that if he’s elected president — fat chance — that the first executive order he’d issue would be to undo all previous executive orders.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/217599-rand-paul-says-as-president-he-would-repeal-all-executive-orders

Oh, but wait. His spokesman said he’s more or less kidding. His statement, which he made to Breitbart News, was meant to illustrate that President Obama’s overuse of unconstitutional executive authority is the real target.

OK, then. When he made that statement, did he wink at the reporter? Did he qualify what he said by alluding to what President Obama has done?

Umm. No. He said “all” and I presume he meant “all.”

Such action would repeal a lot of U.S. standing policy, such as the one that prohibits the United States from assassinating foreign leaders. That one was signed by President Gerald R. Ford — in 1975!

Sen. Paul is likely to run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. Good. I hope he does. The political debate needs a laugh or two. Lord knows too much seriousness can get a nation down.

International news, political news

Killing top terrorists 'won't work'

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal knows a thing or two about hunting down and killing terrorists.

So, when he says that killing the top dogs in the terrorist chain of command won’t eradicate the organization, he deserves the nation’s ear.

http://news.msn.com/videos/?ap=True&videoid=f189696c-1d54-4eb9-8637-9c422da93289

McChrystal noted — as many others have acknowledged — that killing Osama bin Laden in May 2011 didn’t eliminate al-Qaeda. Others stepped up to replace him. Now some are saying that the terror group is stronger than before.

The general’s comments come in the wake of President Obama declaring war, in effect, against the Islamic State. The plan now is to go after ISIL’s top leadership, eliminate it, decimate the organization and then perhaps be able to declare some form of victory in this war against terror.

McChrystal is dubious of that strategy, as he said to CNN’s Erin Burnett.

I’ve sought to make the point on this blog that the anti-terror campaign is unlike any we’ve ever fought as a nation. There is no clearly defined enemy operating out of foreign capitals, funded openly by hostile governments. They operate in the shadows, seeking to keep their identity secret for as long as possible.

Yes, we know who ISIL’s leaders are, as we know the names of those who lead al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram or any other terrorist organization. If we kill every leader of every group, does that send the minions into hiding, dispirited? No. I enrages them and they find new leaders to step up.

The fight is worth waging and we must fight them with extreme prejudice.

However, as Gen. McChrystal has said correctly, killing the bad guys’ leaders isn’t enough.

International news, national news, political news

OK, it's official: We're at war

Is it war or is it a counter-terrorism campaign?

I’d thought out loud in an earlier blog post that the terminology didn’t matter. We’re going after the Islamic State with heavy weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry — who’s been to war … in Vietnam — was reluctant to use that term. Now the commander in chief, Barack Obama, says we’re “at war” with ISIL.

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-makes-official-us-war-220808683.html

Let’s be mindful, though, of what this “war” actually means, or doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean we’re going to take over a foreign capital, run up the Stars and Stripes and declare victory. Nor does it mean we’re going to receive surrender papers from a foreign government aboard some warship. It won’t result in our rebuilding (I hope) some nation that we’ve blown to smithereens trying to root out and kill terrorists.

What the “war” means is that we’re going to be in this fight for perhaps well past the foreseeable future. I suspect we’ll still be fighting this “war” when Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017. He’ll hand the battle plans over to his successor, wish that person good luck and then the new commander in chief will be left with trying to kill all the ISIL fighters our military can find.

The war against terrorism is something we launched after 9/11. Everyone in America knew the war wouldn’t have an end date. Heck, there really wasn’t an strategy to conclude the war when President Bush declared it after the terrorists killed thousands of Americans on that terrible Tuesday morning 13 years ago.

I still don’t give a damn what we call this conflict. If it’s war, then we’re going to have to redefine how we know when it’s over.

First, though, we’ll likely have to redefine when it ends. Good luck with that.

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'Silver lining' showing up in Islamic State fight

President Obama sees a potential “silver lining” in the fight to eradicate the Islamic State.

It lies in capitals of Arab states that are joining the fight with the United States of America.

Obama sees ‘silver lining’ in ISIS fight

It’s time for those nations to declare war — or take hostile action of some sort — against terrorists who are perverting Islam into something that doesn’t resemble one of the world’s great religions.

The president spoke to a group of Democratic donors at a fundraiser and said, “We’re going to be able to build the kind of coalition that allows us to lead but also isn’t entirely dependent on what we do.”

Therein lies the potential silver lining.

For far too long these Islamic extremists have been declaring some kind of “holy war” against the “infidels” of the world. They have embarked on a campaign of terror in the name of Islam. Meanwhile, Sunni Arab states have been relatively quiet. They haven’t joined the fight in an active sense.

Today, just a few days after Obama announced his administration’s strategy to fight ISIL, a coalition is beginning to form and it is including Middle East nations with actual skin in this so-called game.

Yes, the United States can lead the coalition, but it cannot carry this fight all alone.

Let’s hope, therefore, that this coalition of Muslim nations not only holds up, but strengthens in its resolve to destroy terrorist groups that are harming them as much as they seek to harm The Great Satan.

national news

Obama better economically than Reagan? Wow!

Here’s a bit of a surprise: Barack Obama’s presidency has had a greater positive impact on the national economy than the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

You want more of a surprise? This assessment comes from Forbes Magazine, hardly known as a liberal-leaning publication prone to sing the praises of lefties.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/

Nope. Forbes isn’t exactly Mother Jones or The Nation.

But in the essay attached to this post, it notes that the unemployment rate has dropped more quickly during the Obama administration than it did when Reagan was president. The deficit? It’s dropped significantly while during the Reagan years it grew way beyond what was considered prudent at the time.

Forbes cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics as its source for the glowing economic report. It notes that the August job-growth figure was a disappointment; the nation added “only” 142,000 jobs in August, breaking the string of 200,000-job string of monthly reports. There’s no need to wallow in despair, according to Forbes: “Despite the lower than expected August jobs number, America will create about 2.5 million new jobs in 2014.”

This is worth noting — and I encourage you to read the Forbes article — because Obama’s critics continue to do an effective job of poor-mouthing the economy. There continues to be this perception among the public that the economy remains in the tank. For the life of me I cannot understand how the right wing is able to sell that notion. But it does.

I suppose one can pick apart all these economic indicators and find negative elements to highlight. It’s just interesting to me nevertheless that Forbes — founded by the late Malcolm Forbes’s father and continued by his one-time Republican presidential candidate son, Steve — would find so much good news to report about someone with whom the organization has so little in common.

International news, national news, political news

War or counter-terrorism effort?

We’re beginning now to parse the meaning of the word “war” and whether our effort to destroy the Islamic State means we’ve entered yet another armed conflict.

Secretary of State John Kerry disputed that terminology, declaring that the United States is embarking on a comprehensive “counter-terrorism” campaign to eradicate the hideous terrorists.

It doesn’t matter one damn bit to me what we call it.

All of this harkens back to when we declared “war” on international terrorism. President Bush reacted to the 9/11 attacks by tossing out the Taliban in Afghanistan. In doing so, he said the nation would be waging a multi-front war against terrorists, hunting them down wherever they lurked or hid.

Indeed, the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York served — if you’ll pardon the use of this term — the Mother of All Wakeup Calls to this country. We’ve known about terrorists. We’ve understood intellectually they can do us harm. However, the 9/11 attacks were so brilliantly conceived and executed — and it pains me terribly to say it that way — that we were forced to ratchet up our vigilance to unprecedented levels.

So the war goes on.

Our campaign now to eradicate the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant can be called a war, or it can be called a counter-terrorism offensive.

I don’t care what they call it. The strategy just announced by President Obama is a continuation of what we’ve been doing ever since the terrorists committed their heinous act 13 years ago.

It’s a new kind of conflict with a new kind of enemy. I’m still hoping to learn how in the world we’ll ever be able to declare victory.

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Bad guys at the gate? Hardly

The Washington Times, a leading conservative-leaning newspaper, splashed a large headline Wednesday proclaiming that Islamic State terrorists are “planning to infiltrate” our southern border.

There you have it. Panic has set in.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/10/us-confirms-islamic-state-planning-infiltration-bo/

Social media is starting to churn up some dire stories about Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant getting ready to invade the United States. The Washington Times story suggests, if you parse the language with just a bit of care, that ISIL is merely “making plans” to do some bad things to us.

Does that mean ISIL is at the gate? Does it mean an attack is imminent? Does it mean ISIL is all set to start exploding bombs, capturing Americans and doing terrible things to their captives?

It means nothing of the kind.

All the story really means is that ISIL wants to do all those things. Well, duh? Who doesn’t know that already?

We should do well to take a deep breath and place just a bit of trust in the national security professionals’ ability to do the job for which they are highly trained.

I’m less willing at this point to listen to politicians looking to get their names in the news by making dire assertions that to date cannot be proven.

Do we dismiss the suggestions that ISIL is “planning” to attack the United States of America? Of course not.

We shouldn’t interpret such expressions of intent as anything more than that. I’m going to continue to place my trust on the men and women who are trained to keep us safe. I’ll start to worry when they sound the alarm.

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ISIL strategy laid out … more or less

President Obama has laid it out there.

We’re going to bomb the daylights out of ISIL in Iraq and will start doing so in Syria; we’re going to enlist the aid of regional allies, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, to join in the fight; we’re going to arm and equip “moderate rebel forces” in Syria fighting against the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

What I didn’t hear tonight from President Obama was how we’re going to know when we’ve defeated the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

http://news.msn.com/us/obama-to-launch-airstrikes-in-syria-for-first-time

Ever since the war on terror began after the 9/11 attacks, the United States never has set a standard for declaring victory. We cannot ever actually win this war. The president tonight noted that it is impossible for the United States to root out every single individual who terrorizes others. Therefore, I believe, the war against terror will continue probably forever, for as long as people coalesce into groups with the intention of committing terrorist acts.

I heard a commander in chief dedicated to keeping us safe from evil. I saw in his face precisely the same level of determination I’ve seen, say, in President George W. Bush when he announced his intention to go after the “axis of evil.” I heard Barack Obama declare his immense pride in our military personnel.

Can we defeat ISIL with air power alone? Barack Obama believes we can, if we’re smart and if we work diligently with our allies in the region to hunt ISIL fighters down and destroy them.

Although it might be impossible to declare ultimate victory against ISIL or any other terror group that seeks to harm us, it isn’t too much to hope that there might be a day when we can declare the imminent threat to America has been eliminated.

The fight, though, must go on.