Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Is this what world war looks like?

November 14, 2015 kanelis2012

Paris has been hit. Again.

Terrorists went on the attack in a concert hall. Dozens of victims were killed. French police then stormed the hall, rescued some hostages and killed two attackers.

World leaders around the globe have issued statements of condemnation. President Obama called the tragedy today an “attack on all of humanity.”

Is this what world war looks like? Have we been fighting this international war against terrorism around the globe to such a degree that someone can declare this to be the start of World War III?

Paris was hit a couple of years ago at a magazine publishing office. Twelve victims died in that act of terror. And there have been countless other attacks all around the world.

The 9/11 attacks in 2001 in New York and Washington seemed to ignite the inferno. There have been so many others they are impossible off the top of one’s head to count them.

We knew when President Bush sent the troops into Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists that this war wouldn’t be won with a surrender document. There wouldn’t be a Battleship Missouri Moment. This looks for all the world like a war without end.

Paris is suffering yet again.

Our hearts go out to the French, its leaders and its people.

Will there be more heartache somewhere else? Most assuredly. Yet the fight must go on wherever we find monsters willing to commit gruesome acts of terror against innocent victims.

For as long as it takes.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Patience is the key to eliminating these monsters

November 13, 2015 kanelis2012

American and British intelligence officials are beginning to talk now as though they believe they have killed Mohammad Emwazi, aka Jihadi John.

The strike was quick but it was months in the planning.

It goes to show that patience is a critical ingredient in this war against terrorism and the people who commit these horrific acts.

Emwazi was a British citizen, born in Kuwait but reared in the U.K. He became a propaganda tool for the Islamic State and was video-recorded beheading captive foreigners, the first of whom was U.S. journalist James Foley.

Yes, a lot of folks demanded immediate justice. As it turned out, though, in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, these efforts require tremendous coordination, attention to the tiniest detail and absolute certainty that we’ve got the bad guy right where we want him if we intend to strike.

The hunt for bin Laden commenced right after the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration hunted far and wide across Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bin Laden almost got it at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. He got away. President Bush left office in January 2009, handed the operation off to President Obama, who then took up where his predecessor left off.

Detailed analysis of intelligence led the Navy SEALs and CIA spooks to the Pakistan complex, where they found bin Laden — and then shot him to death.

Emwazi’s death — which is beginning to sound more certain — was delivered after tremendous effort by U.S. and British intelligence agencies and military planners from both countries.

What’s the lesson?

It’s that we cannot antsy when we don’t bring justice to these monsters right away.

Patience, folks. Patience.

International news, national news, political news

Trump plan = Operation Wetback

November 13, 2015 kanelis2012

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to round up all illegal immigrants hiding in the United States and ship ’em all back to their home countries.

He’ll do it humanely.

Sure, Donald.

We tried that once in this country. President Dwight Eisenhower — one of the better presidents this country ever elected — launched Operation Wetback in the 1950s.

The program didn’t work too well.

It carried a disparaging name attached to Mexican immigrants. Agents fanned out across the country and rounded up the immigrants, sent them to detention centers and then shipped them off. Many of those individuals died while being held or while they fended for themselves under terrible conditions.

Trump has used the program as a benchmark for the kind of initiative he said he would launch if — perish the thought — he were to be elected president of the United States next year. At least he doesn’t identify it by the name it was given when Ike decided on the immigrant roundup.

President Obama, interviewed tonight on ABC News, talked about the images that would be flashed around the world as “deportation agents” took parents away from their children and prepared to send them back to their native country.

“That’s not who we are,” the president said.

No, it is not.

But yet, Trump continues to gain traction with his party’s primary voter base by declaring his intention to hire 25,000 officers and deploy them to hunt down every single one of the estimated 11 million individuals who are here illegally.

Is the leading GOP candidate seeking to redefine this country?

local news, medical news, national news

ACA adds another insurance client

November 10, 2015 kanelis2012

The number of Americans insured by the Affordable Care Act grew by one today, I am happy to announce.

I also am happy to disclose that the enrollment process went quite smoothly.

You’ve heard of the ACA, I’m sure. It’s the federal health insurance program also known as Obamacare. It is President Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation. His critics like calling it Obamacare, adding the appropriate derisive inflection in their voices at times whenever they want to make some kind of critical point about it.

Yes, it got off to that rocky start a couple of years ago. The healthcare.gov website broke down right out of the chute. Then the government computer geeks went to work to fix it. They did.

They rolled it out a second time it and then millions of Americans got signed up.

Oh, but congressional Republicans are still angry about the ACA. They’re trying to sue the president to get it tossed out. Indeed, a federal judge recently ruled that the GOP has legal standing to actually file suit.

Never mind that the insurance is working. Or that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance if the law gets tossed out.

Oh, but hey. It’s only us out here.

Well, today my wife got enrolled. Her previous health insurer is getting out of the health insurance business at the end of the year. So, with a good bit of help from our trusted insurance broker — with whom we’ve done business for as long as we’ve lived in Amarillo — we got my much better half signed up with a new insurance carrier.

And you know what? It’s going to cost us less than my wife’s previous policy did.

On that note, I want to offer a word of thanks to the president of the United States for pushing through the legislation that enables us to purchase health insurance at a price we can afford.

business news, national news, political news, State news

Keystone decision makes sense

November 8, 2015 kanelis2012

Politicians’ positions can “evolve,” yes?

That means bloggers can change their mind, too, I reckon.

So it has happened with the Keystone XL pipeline. I once blogged in support of the notion of running the pipeline from Canada, through the heart of the Great Plains to the Texas coast.

The price of gasoline was skyrocketing. We needed some way to put more fossil fuel into the international market, I said back then.

What has happened? Jobs came back. Oil prices fell sharply. So did the price of gasoline.

The need for the pipeline? Well, it’s no longer compelling.

President Obama said “no” to the pipeline this week. The fallout has been reduced significantly because of economic and environmental factors that have turned in our nation’s favor.

I now believe the president’s rejection of Keystone makes sense.

The president nixed Keystone because it wouldn’t help the U.S. consumer market, given that the oil would be refined here and then shipped offshore to … wherever.

Plus, there is that environmental concern about possible spillage and leaks from a pipeline that would coarse through nearly 2,000 miles of U.S. territory. Those things do happen, you know. The damage is significant.

Oh, and the jobs it would create? They now appear to have been minimized because private-sector job creation has been heating up nicely over the course of the past half-dozen years.

So, good bye to Keystone.

Sure, our Canadian friends are unhappy. So are some refiners on the Texas Gulf Coast.

The rest of us? Well, I think we’ll be all right without building the Keystone XL.

media news, national news, political news

‘Liberal media’ take no prisoners

November 7, 2015 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Ben Carson has counterattacked the “liberal media” for what he calls a “witch hunt.”

Questions about his past have become all the rage. CNN keeps poking around in the hunt for corroboration that he once stabbed someone in a fit of anger. The network can’t find anyone to back it up. Now we hear that Dr. Carson, um, didn’t exactly get offered a West Point scholarship in the manner he said he did.

The media want to know the truth.

The counterattack points to what the doctor/Republican presidential candidate said is a double standard as it regards Democrats running for president. The media don’t look quite as intently at them as they do Republicans, according to Dr. Carson.

Hold on, doc.

Barack Obama faced intense scrutiny over:

His relationship with a fiery Church of Christ pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
His friendship with anti-Vietnam War activist William Ayers.
His place of birth and whether he was constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States.
His academic records at Harvard, which Carson brought up again this week.

And, oh yes, Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic frontrunner has, throughout her public career, faced down matters involving:

Allegations that she covered up information about Benghazi.
Her involvement with her husband, the 42nd president, in the Whitewater real estate matter.
The death of her good friend, Vince Foster, who some in the media have suggested was murdered.

So … let’s take a breath, shall we?

I also should mention the names of other prominent Democratic pols who’ve wilted under the media glare.

Do the names Gary Hart and John Edwards ring a bell? How about Anthony Weiner and Barney Frank?

Let’s get back to the story at hand. Did a leading candidate for president of the United States misrepresent whether he was offered a West Point scholarship?

Well … ?

International news

ISIS might have enlisted a new, powerful foe

November 5, 2015 kanelis2012

Is there any chance that the Islamic State has opened the door for a powerful new adversary to enter the active worldwide fight against the terrorist monsters?

British and U.S. intelligence officials are beginning to piece together a theory that a bomb was placed aboard a Russian Metrojet charter airplane that exploded over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

All 224 people aboard the craft, mostly Russian, died in the tragic crash.

ISIS takes credit

Then we hear that ISIS has taken credit for the explosion, even though recovery teams at the crash site initially said they couldn’t find evidence of a bomb.

Well, if there is to be any possible silver lining in this tragedy — and the world is sending its sympathy to the families of those who perished — it is that Russia well might now become an active ally of the United States in this global anti-terror conflict.

If history is a judge of how the Russians might react to this carnage, then the Islamic State well might have picked the wrong foe to fight.

History tells us that when Nazi German troops invaded the then-Soviet Union in June 1941, they plundered the territory they captured en route to Moscow. They killed millions of Russians.

The Red Army then turned the tide against the Germans and began advancing westward, driving the Germans out of Russia. They returned the “favor,” so to speak, by killing German soldiers who were surrendering. They fought a vengeance-filled advance on an enemy that had brought so much misery to innocent victims.

Yes, history possibly can be a guide to the kind of vengeance that contemporary Russia might seek in this worldwide war against the Islamic State.

President Obama would do well to recruit his adversary Russian President Vladimir Putin to join us in this struggle.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Should the president return that Peace Prize?

November 1, 2015 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Barack H. Obama campaigned for the presidency vowing to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His election in 2008 prompted the Nobel Committee to award him the Peace Prize the following year with the hope of a peaceful future in those two countries. The new president accepted the prize while acknowledging the unusual context in which the committee awarded it.

I never thought I’d say this, but I have to wonder if President Obama has ever considered giving the award back.

Why? Well, consider that that he vowed to end both wars. They haven’t ended. Now he’s about to commit a handful of U.S. troops into a third country to engage in the battle against the Islamic State.

Obama faces dilemma

The president recently announced that he would keep troops fighting in Afghanistan past the time he leaves office in January 2017; our commitment in Iraq remains, despite the pullout of frontline combat troops. Now this, the deployment of Special Forces to assist the Kurds fighting ISIS in northern Syria.

He took office while the country was fighting in two countries. He likely will leave office with the nation fighting in three countries.

This is not the legacy that Barack Obama ever wanted, but it’s part of the legacy he will leave the next president of the United States.

I get that circumstances have changed since he took office as the so-called “transformational” president. The Islamic State has exploded onto the scene. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has brutalized and murdered hundreds of thousands of his people. The Iraqi military has fallen far short of its mission to defend the country against Islamic State murderers. The Taliban has fought back in Afghanistan.

Yes, we killed Osama bin Laden. We’ve continued to hunt down and kill terrorists all across the Middle East and South Asia. And we’ve known all along that the Global War on Terror would not end in the conventional way, with one side signing a peace treaty to end the hostilities. We are fighting an elusive and cunning enemy.

However, all that hope that Barack Obama brought to the presidency has dissipated as he heads for the final turn of his two terms in office.

I’m not going to say President Obama should give back the Nobel Peace Prize, although I wouldn’t complain out loud if he did.

International news, military news

Special forces to Syria? What’s next?

October 30, 2015 kanelis2012

It’s been said many times that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is our enemy. So is the Islamic State, which also is Assad’s enemy. Thus, Assad becomes our “friend” because the United States and Syria oppose the Islamic State?

My head is spinning.

President Obama has just performed a major pivot on Syria. We’re sending about 50 special operations forces to Syria to assist the government in fighting ISIS. Does that mean we’re getting engaged in a ground war in Syria? The president says “no.” I’m not so sure.

We’re putting “boots on the ground” in a place that’s been involved in a bloody civil war for many years now.

I don’t like this change of direction.

The issue of who’s our friend in the Middle East is complicated enough as it is. By my reckoning — and I’m sure many others — we have one true ally in that region: Israel. Many other nations’ leaders say they’re with us in the fight against ISIS. By and large, they have been — at best — not totally reliable.

So now we’re going to reverse ourselves and commit a handful of ground troops to this terrible conflict. Are they going to be frontline forces? The Pentagon says no and that they won’t necessarily be thrust directly into harm’s way.

What will the nation’s reaction be when we get word of the first person killed in action?

And … for what? To assist a brutal dictator who our own president has said should be removed from power?

national news, political news

Reid weighs in on Rubio’s (lack of) attendance

October 30, 2015 kanelis2012

Is it really and truly the business of the Senate minority leader to comment on the attendance record of one of his colleagues?

Well, yes it is.

Harry Reid is a Nevada Democrat; Marco Rubio is a Florida Republican. Reid said this week that Rubio ought to quit his Senate seat if he’s going to keep running for president of the United States.

Why does it matter to Reid?

Well, it matters to Reid because it ought to matter to all Americans. Senator are federal employees. They get paid $174,000 annually from the federal Treasury, into which we all contribute with our tax money.

Rubio has indicated he doesn’t much like serving in the Senate. It’s too, um, tedious for the young man. He wants to become the Leader of the Free World, to make things happen in a hurry. He’s not seeking re-election to the Senate in 2016.

Reid’s call is on point, as Rubio keep racking up no-shows on Senate votes.

A newspaper in Rubio’s home state, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, has called on Rubio to quit. He’s ripping off the state’s taxpayers and his constituents, the Sun-Sentinel said. And this is a paper that endorsed Rubio when he ran for the office in 2010.

Let’s be clear: Rubio isn’t the first rookie senator to take a pass on doing his day job while looking for a better-paying public service gig. Sen. Barack Obama did the same thing in 2007-2008 when he ran for president. Should he have quit his Senate seat when he ran for the White House? Yeah, probably. But that’s all water over the dam now.

What’s on the table now is whether Marco Rubio should keep collecting that fat — taxpayer-subsidized — salary without doing much of the work that’s required of him.

Hit the road, Sen. Rubio. Campaign for president all you want, but do it on your own time … not ours.

High Plains Blogger