Wednesday, March 5, 2014

It took a while for me to figure out how Obama kept drawing red lines that other countries wouldn’t respect.

But now it all seems clear to me: Obama’s using all of the government’s supply of the color red on the deficit. Hence there’s no red left for the lines he draws in foreign policy.

As reports continue to circulate of armed gunman taking over public property in Ukraine-- gunmen that are likely under the control of the Russian government-- another of Obama’s red lines that wasn’t has been crossed.

“Armed men seized the regional government headquarters and parliament building in Crimea on Thursday and raised the Russian flag,” says our own NightWatch. "Reports on the number of men ranged from 60 to 120. Police made no move to remove them.”

This has been followed up by seizure of airports in Crimea. Crimea, a peninsula that juts out into the Black Sea and therefore affords Russia some access to the Mediterranean, is supposedly an independent republic that’s part of Ukraine.

“This crisis affords President Putin and Russia the best opportunity since the collapse of the Soviet Union for recovering control of Crimea,” concludes NightWatch.

You might remember that Russia engineered the same type of coup in the Republic of Georgia in 2008 when they essentially annexed parts of Georgia known as South Ossetia and Abkhazia as a result of a 5-day war after a Russian invasion.

We'll call that war the first manifestation of the Obama Wars that have broken out in the wake of his weakness, er, election.

Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, South Ossetia and Ukraine. I don't know what dictators would do without ethnic minorities.

Mexico anyone?

I’m not saying that Obama is a coward, but if Caesar crossed the Rubicon while Obama was in Rome, the One would schedule a tee time.

Obama wanted to be remembered for something “big” that he accomplished.

Losing the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe certainly qualifies.

Chamberlain was duped by Hitler at Munich, but he was a fool; Roosevelt was gulled by Stalin at Yalta, but FDR, by then, was a sick old man; Truman was taken in at Potsdam, but he eventually saw through ruse and stood up to the old, evil empire.

That’s because Harry Truman, farmer, failed businessman, and volunteer soldier had the capacity to grow in a way that elitists Chamberlain and Roosevelt did not.

Today you can measure someone’s establishment credentials by their inability to embrace new realities, in the same way you used to be able to measure someone’s counter culture affinities by hair and clothes.

You can take the measure of the man Obama by his inability to grow.

He really is the head of the new elite in this country.

As I have said elsewhere: In part, Obama’s troubles stem from the rigidity of his broken ideas. They admit of no compromise here at home.

And no backbone anywhere else.

Egypt, Libya—in fact almost all of North Africa-- Sudan, Mali, Syria, Georgia, and now Ukraine are all a part of Obama’s Wars. Renewed fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan too are part of the bitter legacy of Obama’s Wars. 
 
While Obama picks on the Catholic Church, doctors, patients, the Tea Party, coal miners, truckers, banks and small businesses here at home, a great gouge has been ripped through the globe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea by Obama’s Wars.

It's appeasement, buffet style, all you can eat, one fixed price: Our freedom. Or someone else's. Either way.

William Manchester relates in his epic biography of Winston Churchill that prime minster Ramsay McDonald, a great architect of appeasement, had stopped speaking with Churchill: “Winston had called him ‘the boneless wonder,’ the ‘greatest living master of falling without hurting himself,’ and the man who possessed ‘the gift of compressing the largest numbers of words into the small amount of thought.’”

And it’s the thoughtlessness that’s so maddening about Obama, who like Ramsay McDonald, is the first head of government for his country's labor party.

Because some men will pay for Obama's heedless weakness.

And the red that is spilled won’t just be confined to the ink here at home, but already includes blood spilled abroad as well.


You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. When government expands entitlements, illegal aliens always end up with a piece of the pie. Obamacare promoters relented to GOP pressure to include an illegal alien ban on eligibility and vowed endlessly that no benefits would go to the "undocumented." But denial isn't just a river in Egypt. It's the Obama way.

In Oregon this week, officials confessed that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants had been "accidentally" steered from the state's low-income Medicaid program and instead were enrolled in Obamacare in violation of the law. Oopsie. The Oregonian newspaper's Nick Budnick reported that the health bureaucrats "discovered the problem several weeks ago and are correcting it." Get in line. The beleaguered Cover Oregon health insurance exchange has been riddled with ongoing problems, errors and glitches since last October that have yet to be fixed.

Take note: This wasn't a one-time computer meltdown. Because Oregon's health insurance exchange website has been offline and its software architects under investigation for possible fraud, the Oregon Obamacare drones have been processing each and every application manually. That means nearly 4,000 illegal alien applications with "inaccurate" data somehow passed through government hands and somehow ended up getting routed through as new enrollees with Obamacare-approved full-service health care.

How many Obamacare services did these nearly 4,000 illegal aliens avail themselves of, and at what cost?

Does anyone believe the same incompetent boobs who enrolled them will be able to track down the nearly 4,000 illegal alien beneficiaries, "correct" the "errors" and ensure that it doesn't happen again?

What a slap in the face to the millions of law-abiding Americans who have lost their health care coverage and work hours thanks to Democratic-sponsored federal health care regulatory burdens and mandate costs.

One Oregon Obamacare manager defended the unlawful illegal alien enrollment by explaining: "We were just getting people into the services." And there's the rub. The imperative of these government social engineers is to herd as many "clients" into taxpayer-subsidized programs as possible. Just last week, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson publicized an open letter to families with illegal alien relatives promising that no one would be deported for seeking Obamacare services.

"No one in America who is eligible should be afraid to apply for health coverage because they have a family with mixed status," Johnson assured. And in another sign of how the White House is still planning for mass illegal alien amnesty, Johnson also made clear: "Enrolling in health coverage ... will not prevent your loved ones who are undocumented from getting a green card in the future or who do not yet have a green card at risk."

As always, California Democrats are at the forefront of busting open Obamacare for the illegal alien population. Earlier this month, Democratic state Sen. Ricardo Lara introduced a bill to extend health benefits and a special online marketplace to one million illegals under an Obamacare-style program subsidized by state taxpayer dollars.

In case you forgot, President Obama had already paved the path for illegal alien Obamacare when he signed the massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) in 2009. As I've reported previously, the law loosened eligibility requirements for legal immigrants and their children by watering down document and evidentiary standards -- making it easy for individuals to use fake Social Security cards to apply for benefits with little to no chance of getting caught. In addition, Obama's S-CHIP expansion revoked Medicaid application time limits that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law.

Open-borders activists saw those provisions as first steps toward universal health coverage for illegals. They see America as the medical welcome mat to the world. Over the past year, they've ratcheted up public protests demanding free organ transplants for illegal alien patients. In Chicago last fall, they marched on a hospital with caskets and posters demanding scarce organs. One illegal alien blasted authorities for putting "paper over our lives." In California, illegal alien transplant patients count on federal incompetence and lax enforcement to abet them, because if they notify the state that DHS "is aware of their presence and does not plan to deport them," they are eligible for full-blown Medi-Cal coverage, according to the state.

Now, Obamacare peddlers from Oregon to New York and all points in between are rushing to sign up new "customers" in advance of the March 31 open enrollment deadline. How many more thousands of illegal aliens will be roped into the system? Remember: In the lexicon of the left, "accidental" is just another word for inevitable entitlement creep.

Netanyahu to Obama: “Israel has been doing its part…the Palestinians haven’t”

  / Jihad Watch
 
obama-netanyahuOf course the “Palestinians” haven’t been doing their part to secure peace, because Obama’s assertion that a State of Palestine could coexist peacefully with the State of Israel is yet another example of his fantasy-based policymaking. In reality, a State of Palestine would be just another base to wage jihad against a weakened and diminished Jewish State. “Obama gets lecture on peace talks from Netanyahu in White House meeting,” by Michael Wilner for the Jerusalem Post, March 3 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with US President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on Monday, pushing back against pressure from the White House to swiftly cut a deal with the Palestinians as the president warned time was running out for peace.
“Israel has been doing its part, and I regret to say that the Palestinians haven’t,” Netanyahu said to Obama, in front of the press. “The people of Israel know that it’s the case.”
“What we want is peace – not a piece of paper,” he said.
Netanyahu called for a “real peace… based on mutual recognition,” and chided his Palestinian counterparts for promoting “incessant violence” against the Jewish state.
“Israel, the Jewish state, is the realization of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination,” Netanyahu said. “I think it’s about time they recognized a nation state for the Jewish people.
We’ve only been here for about 4,000 years.”
Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister to formally call on the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland – what he has called the “minimal requirement” for peace.
“The only peace that will endure is a peace that we can defend,” he added….

Op-ed:
Putin vs Obama...and the U.S. and Ukraine are the losers
By: Diane Sori

"Military action would be completely legitimate because it was at the request of the President Yanukovych." - Vladimir Putin

"I am Russian. I don't need protection."
- Russian protester living in the Ukraine opposed to Putin's efforts to retake the Ukraine

And so as Russian forces encircle Ukraine with Russian fighter jets having entering Ukrainian air space...and with Russian troops having seized control of Crimea including surrounding Ukrainian military installations all while regaining a much wanted warm-water port...Barack HUSSEIN Obama still does NOTHING to stand strong while Putin sends warships into the Black Sea.

Bottom line..Putin has won this round of the chess game against America's cowardly wimp that is our president. And while Obama and his shills continue to bloviate meaningless words a new...or should I say a 'reborn' old super power has emerged...damn you Obama...damn you as this is indeed all of your doing.

All of Obama's doing because he does NOT have the guts or courage to stand strong against Vladimir Putin...albeit a communist Putin proves once again that he is more of a man than Obama will ever be.

And while Obama administration officials called the deployment of Russian troops to Crimea an "uncontested arrival" rather than an invasion, Putin said his troops were deployed as a response to an "unconstitutional coup." Claiming that the pro-Russian former government in Kiev was illegally overthrown and that President Yanukovych (the man Putin regards as Ukraine’s legitimate president) asked him for military help, Obama does NOTHING but waste time questioning if this has any ring of truth to it all while Russian troops continue to settle into Crimea. But the question remains will the Russian troops move north into Kiev...a city free from Russia's orb for years, sadly now on the verge of again falling within it...or will Putin be happy with just retaking Crimea.

Something tells me NO for Ukraine has always been a hot button issue for the Russians ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union more than two decades ago. And when you add in what was an administrative turnover of Crimea to Ukraine in 1994, Ukraine is and will always be thought of as the 'cradle' of Russian civilization ...the 'cradle' that must be returned to the motherland.

Remember also that in the all-important power game between nations... especially between old Cold War foes...Russia is but a single country without Ukraine but with Ukraine the Russian empire is indeed reborn.

Putin knows this and he is now flexing his muscle against the U.S and specifically against Obama...who he knows has NO backbone or will to stop him. Putin has played his hand cleverly and calculatingly and is now saving Russian 'face'... rebuilding Russia as a superpower to be feared...to be respected...and is doing so while Barack HUSSEIN Obama bloviates about useless economic sanctions... economic sanctions that simply do NOT work.

A case in point is Iran, a country economically sanctioned for many years now. And while Obama and crew claim it was these sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table, the truth is that Iran, with their strings being pulled by Putin, had Putin turning the disarmament game in his favor by his using Syria as a deflection tactic to keep American eyes focused on the Middle East while he successfully implemented what was always his main goal...bringing Ukraine back into the fold. And know that what Putin wants Putin gets...one way or another and that he will keep what he conquered, because for Putin to give up Crimea now would mean the end of his presidency, as it would mean 'the Bear' backed down and former KGB colonels do NOT back down...ever.

So are we on the 'Eve of Destruction'...the start of WWIII perhaps...I don't think so for when all the bravado and chest pounding is stripped away on all sides this incursion into Ukraine is primarily two-fold...first, Putin is trying to secure his warm-water naval base and destabilize Ukraine's government NOT actually trying to set the stage for a total annexation or invasion of Ukraine...and second, Putin wants to control the European and global economies...as in energy prices and the prices of equities. And by accomplishing this, as an added bonus Putin gets to rebuild Russia as the world's number one superpower stepping over Obama and the U.S. in the process for he knows that Obama will NOT stop or deter him.

And those who think Putin doesn't have Europe by the throat right now are horribly mistaken for more than 33% of the gas used by Europe flows from Russia through 18 Ukrainian pipelines into Europe...translating into he who controls the pipelines controls the income that goes along with them. Couple that with the growth of Russia's economy because of oil and gas exports into Europe, and Putin can now manipulate a more aggressive foreign policy as he economically holds Europe hostage, especially when it's played against one who will NOT oppose him.

Remember back when these infamous words of Obama's were caught off mike in March 2012..."After my election I have more flexibility..." as in did Obama know that Putin was planning this maneuver two years ago (this was NO last minute decision on Putin's part as it required careful planning) and was a deal made for the U.S. to look away. Obama's response or lack thereof leads one to believe there is more to this than simply meets the eye for how did our intelligence community miss this...I mean they had to know Russian naval ships were moving into position.. they had to know Russian troops were amassing along Ukraine's border...these are NOT things that can be hidden...they had to know but were they ordered to look away...with this administration anything is possible.

And we all know that Obama orchestrates foreign policy NOT in America's best interests but in the best interests of the enemy and if that means selling out to Putin to manipulate confrontations in the Middle East...especially confrontations with Iran and Syria...if it aids in Obama's oh-so-wanted sell out and elimination of Israel in the process than so be it.

And while yesterday NATO and Putin agreed to hold talks on the Ukraine on Wednesday, Putin continues to insist he is doing what needs to be done to protect Russian citizens living in Ukraine, but in a sign that he might actually be trying to defuse tensions to some degree, Putin has ordered troops conducting military exercises near Ukraine's border with western Russia to return to their bases.

And Putin's doing this all while he claims there are NO Russian troops in Ukraine or in Crimea, but pictures say what words lie...and the games continue with Ukraine's people the losers.