I have often felt that Obama has more to fear from Democrats that Republicans.  Both Democrats and Republicans are well aware that he is a failed President likely to take the Democratic Party to ruin in 2012.  Democrats are still reeling from the shellacking they took last fall.  In addition, the Democratic Party is dominated by true KoolAid drinking anti-war liberals.  While no one is impressed with Obama’s handling of Libya, liberal Democrats are outraged.  They could barely tolerate his continuation of the Bush policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They were totally unprepared for him to go off half-cocked with his adventure in Libya.  Normally Dennis Kucinich is a harmless diversion.  But when you combine this with Boehner’s blunt warning to Obama, this is now very serious:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57032.html

It looks like the Obama administration is going to have to go hat in hand to congress.  The problem is that they have no hat to carry and no hand to play.  It is really hard to justify intervening in Libya and not Syria.  In addition, while we were distracted in Libya, Afghanistan is melting down and Iran is nuking up.  At best, this is highly embarrassing for the Obama administration at worst he may have blundered into a constitutional crisis.

 TDM

This didn’t take long! 

Boehner just put Obama on notice that he considers the administration to be in violation of the War Powers Act.  He gave them until Friday to comply:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/14/boehner-gives-obama-friday-deadline-libya/

One would hope that the Obama administration will be smart enough to head off a potential constitutional crisis.  So far Obama is saying that he “notified” congress so he’s good to go.  Obviously, Boehner has a different opinion.  I suspect that Boehner has overwhelming support in congress, including from Democrats.  No matter how this ends up, it is a public slap in the face for Obama.  The only question is how badly he will be hurt.  It sure looks like Boehner is willing to take this on.

 TDM

Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and John Kerry all shrugged off the House’s resolution on the war in Iraq as irrelevant.  Kerry said neither measure will even come up for a vote in the Senate.  This story is about to go in one of two directions very quickly.  Either the House will meekly back down, giving this President free reign, or they will challenge him.  My hunch is that a big time challenge is right around the corner.

President Obama has mishandled everything since he became President, and we are paying a price for it all over the world.  Our economy is headed toward a double digit recession and our foreign affairs are in shambles.  There is zero evidence of brilliant leadership here, just one gaff after another.  It is an unprecedented combination of arrogance and incompetence.  No amount of main stream media spin can make up for such pathetic performance.

It would appear that his worst mistake was ignoring a direct challenge from the House of Representatives.  Ironically, if he had just asked, they probably would have grudgingly supported him on the war in Libya.  But he is too arrogant, too stubborn and too dumb to ask.

Perhaps this is a Democratic disease.  They start to believe their own lies.  If you want a recent example, look at Anthony Weiner.  Even top Democrats are asking him to resign, yet he is just now considering the possibility.  People like this are so arrogant and so narcissistic they are incapable of self-evaluation.  They live in their own delusional world where they have convinced themselves that the universe revolves around them. 

Leon Panetta is currently undergoing confirmation hearings in the Senate.  This is pretty amazing stuff.  John McCain apparently has no problem with the imperial Presidency.  Jim Webb, on the other hand, strongly disagrees.  The following article lays out the issue:

  http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/panetta-obama-can-use-military-without-c

 Ironically a serious problem for Obama is that “constitutional scholar” Obama, said during the election, said that what President Obama is doing now is unconstitutional.

“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

No one from the Obama administration has even argued that Libya was an actual or imminent threat to the nation.  That begs the question: “Was he wrong then, or is he deliberately ignoring the constitution now?”

Barack Obama has openly challenged congress and arrogantly told them they have no voice in how he uses our military.  If he had a 60% approval rating, he was winning the war and the economy was soaring, he might have gotten away with that.  But, the opposite is true.  I think congress is going to act, and they are going to do so with a fury that will be stunning to behold.  In many ways, they have no choice.  They are faced with a challenge similar to the one George Bush gave the UN.  He said you either back up what you say, or you become a meaningless organization.  What makes this so dangerous for Obama is that John Boehner will have wide-spread bi-partisan support for what he does.  I suspect we are about to find out that hell hath no fury like a congress ignored.

 TDM

Sarah Palin is the face of the Republican Party.  The main stream media is pouring over her e-mails as Governor of Alaska and finding out that Sarah Palin is a very nice person, who did a good job.  They didn’t find the naïve idiot they expected.  Instead they found someone pretty focused on doing a good job as Governor, yet at the same time, a remarkably nice person.  At the same time people were inventing conspiracy theories about her son Trig, she wrote an e-mail to her friends saying that he was a gift from God and she looked upon him as a blessing rather than a burden.  Remarkable!

On the other hand, the face of the Democratic Party is Anthony Weiner.  Each day we wake up to more coverage and more disgusting details about his personal life.   Less than a year ago, this was the fresh new face of the Democratic Party.  They were already talking about him as a future major of New York, future Governor New York and perhaps future President of the United States.  This is similar to what happened with Obama.  Weiner gave an exciting speech and the main stream media wets their pants in the excitement, failing to recognize that the speech was a big lie.  He spoke with passion and that is all that mattered.  Now, of course, Weiner is literally melting down before our eyes.   He was exposed for who is really is, a two-bit narcissistic opportunist with little real substance.

The contrast between the two could not be starker.  Weiner is a whiner that cares only about himself.  He is a loser in every sense of the word.  Each new revelation just peels away another layer of paint revealing a very ugly person.  Sarah Palin is a winner and the exact opposite happened.  As the false layers of paint slapped on by the hateful main stream media are stripped away we find a brilliant leader and a beautiful person.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Right now the picture of the Democratic Party is Anthony Weiner and the picture of the Republican Party is Sarah Palin.

TDM

The State of Alaska just released 24,000 e-mails from Sarah Palin.  The New York Times and the Washington Post immediately leaped at the chance to find some dirt.  They literally went on the internet begging for volunteers to help them dig pour through these e-mails digging for gold.  Never in the history of this country has the main stream media demonstrated such viral hatred for a political figure.  Clearly they are desperate to find a smoking gun so they can destroy her once and for all.

But this has the potential to backfire big time.  The problem is that the main stream media has painted a false picture of Sarah Palin as someone who is not very focused and too stupid and uninformed to understand major issues.  They have pretended that her speeches are written for her and even accused her of using a ghost writer on her book.  Instead we are suddenly seeing all these e-mails, clearly written by Palin herself, revealing someone who is extremely smart, focused and very well informed.  The more e-mails released the more obvious it is going to be that Sarah Palin is a lot sharper than the media admits.

Prior to release of these e-mails and the upcoming documentary of her term as Governor, I thought that Sarah Palin had no chance of being a successful candidate for President.  But initial reports are that liberal females asked to review the documentary were shaken to their core and were observed sobbing.  Apparently the video images of arrogant liberal males viciously and relentlessly dumping on Sarah Palin is pretty hard to ignore.  Now the e-mails may destroy, once and for all, the myth of the stupid Sarah. 

 Most contemporary reporters were not impressed with Abraham Lincoln’s performance during the Gettysburg Address.  But later, when they read the words, they were stunned by the eloquence.  They suddenly realized they had grossly underestimated the speech and the eloquence of the man.  Sarah Palin is a good speaker, but she has a high squeaky voice and a “you betcha” accent that sometimes distracts from her message.  It is quite possible that when people read what she has to say, rather than just listen to soundbites, they may respond very differently.  Time will tell.

 A spotlight does different things to different people.  It tends to accentuate flaws but sometimes it also reveals a superstar.  The main stream media may learn to regret turning this bright light on Sarah Palin.

TDM

Truth is often stranger than fiction. Anthony Weiner finally admitted that he did send the lewd picture of himself. This is pretty amazing after he spent hours over the weekend trying to deny it. In a failed attempt to lie his way out of trouble, he came perilously close to committing a crime. But, perhaps, the real story is with regard to the potential security risk represented by his wife, Huma Abedin.

 While in the military I had a very high security clearance. They not only investigated me, they investigated my family and everyone who knew me. One of the hard and fast rules was that a high-level security clearance should never be given to someone who has close blood relatives living overseas. The problem is that people in this position could be intimidated into violating security. For example, suppose someone has a close family member living overseas. He is told that if he does not provide certain information his relative will be tortured and killed. How many people would be strong enough to resist that kind of pressure? Huma Abedin was raised in Saudi Arabia. Her father was of Indian descent and was an Islamic scholar. He apparently died when she was 17. Her mother is a well-known Islamic scholar and is the Deputy Director of the Dar Al Hekma College for Women, an Islamic school in Saudi Arabia. She is a Pakistani by birth. The following article, which covers a presentation made by Huma Abedin’s mother, explains her view of the world:

http://www.amritavarsham.org/summit/women/saleha.htm

There are a lot of Republicans, as well as Democrats, who speak highly of Huma Abedin. She apparently is well-respected and admired. However, some of the most successful spies in history have been well respected and liked. Alger Hiss was the classic example. The following article from www.history.net does a good job of explaining who Alger Hiss was:

http://www.historynet.com/the-alger-hiss-spy-case.htm

As you can see, there always were and still are people convinced that Alger Hiss was innocent. But, as this article points out, the evidence against him is overwhelming. The real issue is not whether or not he was really innocent, the issue was whether or not we could afford to take the risk in the first place. There is a big difference between accusing someone of being a spy and being prudent with regard to who has access to our most important secrets. Huma Abedin seems, from all accounts, to be a very smart and nice person. She appears to be a loyal citizen. So did Alger Hiss. But, none of that changes the simple reality that because of her personal background she appears to represent a potential security risk. Yet, she is the personal assistant to the former First Lady, former U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State. She is also married to a U.S. Congressman. The following article explains who she is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110607/ts_dailybeast/14578_humaabedinanthonywienersspectacularwife

Perhaps someone in the main stream media should start asking some rather obvious questions. Why do we allow people who could not obtain a security clearance through normal procedures to have such intimate personal contact with people in power? Suppose that Huma Abedin is strongly influenced by Saudi Arabia. That would seem at least possible because she is a practicing Muslim and her mother was given an award directly by Prince Abdullah. This seems to be a lot more important than whether or not Anthony Weiner likes to take pictures of his private parts and send them to women on the internet.

Significant security risks have almost always been people who were liked, respected and considered to be above suspicion.  That is what made them so dangerous.  Kim Philby was so admired that he was being considered for the new Director of MI-6.  He was also one of the worst traitors in the history of Great Britain.  There were numerous warning signs that Philby was a potential security risk.  He fell in love with a woman named Litz Friedman, who he met in Vienna.  She was an Austrian Communist.  He married her to help her escape to England.  She had close blood relatives living in communist countries.  No one considered that to be a problem.  His father was St. John Philby, who was also a member of British Intelligence.  His father converted to Muslim, took an Islamic name and married a Muslim Worman.  He later became an advisor to the King of Saudi Arabia.  Ironically, the name Kim may have been taken from the name of an Indian Spy in one of Rudyard Kiplings books.  No one considered this to be a problem either.  I could add more details, but I think you get the point. 

 TDM

The Rod Blagojevich trial continues to represent very high risk for the Obama administration.  The prosecutor has been determined to convict Blagojevich but seems spectacularly uninterested in the other players.  One of those players is Rahm Emmanuel.  According to the following article, the FBI taped a phone conversation between Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emmanuel:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/08/rahm-emanuel-asked-rod-bl_n_872999.html?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl3%7Csec3_lnk1%7C215458

In this particularly tape Rahm Emmanuel apparently asked Blagojevich to appoint someone to replace him in congress when Emmanuel became Obama’s Chief of Staff:

In the conversation, according to the transcript filed in the motion, Emanuel tells Blagojevich the appointment would give a successor an advantage in winning the seat in an eventual special election and that he wanted someone who didn’t want the job in Congress as a “lifetime commitment.”

Emanuel tells Blagojevich that Forrest Claypool, then a county official, was interested in the congressional seat for “like one term or two max.” Emanuel recently named Claypool to head the Chicago Transit Authority, which oversees one of largest subway and bus networks in the nation.

Blagojevich tells Emanuel his lawyers say he cannot do that as it would be illegal.  Emanuel responded with a creative strategy on how Blagojevich can circumvent the law:

 Emanuel responds he knows that to be true and suggests a legal alternative: If Emanuel steps down three weeks before the end of his term, Blagojevich could make an interim appointment of someone who would take the seat up to the election.

“OK? You would appoint somebody to finish those three weeks …,” Emanuel says in the transcript. “It gives him a head start (over other candidates) and a presumption. So I am going to check that legally out, and then we will, uh, and I, this is between you and I …”

This may not be illegal, but it comes awfully close to influence peddling.  When Emmanuel says he will remember this, the implication is that Blagojevich will be rewarded.  Being “remembered” by the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States is a big deal.  The FBI apparently taped several conversations between Blagojevich and a cast of thousands.  Several of those conversation involved people like Rahm Emmanuel.  Prior to now, the prosecutor has only released the tapes he wanted to release and redacted them to only point the finger at Blagojevich.  I have always felt that this “selective disclosure” was unfair to Blagojevich and was designed to shield others, potentially including Obama, The lid is now officially off that box.  This could go in a million different directions.

It is always dangerous when lies start to unravel.  Once the lid comes off, some people are going to be asking some very interesting questions.  Up until now, while the suspicions were always there, there was no evidence to consider.  That all changed dramatically with the release of this very interesting transcript.

Blagojevich’s defense has always been that he did nothing different then everyone else with regard to the politics of choosing Obama’s replacement in the Senate.  It looks like he’s got a point! 

In some ways this is similar to the Anthony Weiner case.  He made one mistake and accidentally sent one tweet to the wrong person.  That is all it took for his whole sordid history to become public knowledge.  I suspect there are a lot of people in the Obama administration who are very nervous tonight.

TDM

In Britain, if the Prime Minister is hit with a no confidence vote, the immediate response is a resignation and a call for elections.   Barack Obama got a no confidence vote from the United States House of Representatives.  What is more shocking is that over half of the Democratic Caucus voted against Obama.  I am still doing some research, but I believe this is unprecedented.  Even Nixon, at his worst, did not have this happen.  There have been several times when congress was furious with a U.S. President.  Democrats wanted to demand that George Bush surrender in Iraq and start withdrawing troops.  But while they huffed and puffed about it, they never came close to passing this kind of resolution. 

 This is very damaging to Obama and potentially even more damaging to the United States of America.  The problem is that the U.S. Congress just told the world that they do not trust Obama’s ability to make foreign policy decisions.

The War Powers Act was passed in 1973, over the veto of Richard Nixon.  Every subsequent President has felt that the law was unconstitutional.  However, prior to Obama, no President was willing to push the envelope far enough to bring this to a head.  Some Presidents, particularly Bill Clinton, ordered troops into combat for long periods of time without consulting congress.  Although Democrats like to pretend that George Bush conducted an illegal war, the opposite is true.  Bush went to congress and received bi-partisan authorization for his efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  Democrats made a lot of noise, but they never even tried to force a vote to withdraw that authorization.

Republicans are far more hesitant than Democrats to challenge a President with regard to the War Powers Act.  That is because Republicans believe that partisanship should end at the nation’s borders.  Challenging a President with regard to military actions has typically been the exclusive turf of the liberal Democrats.  That is still true today, with Dennis Kucinich drafting a far stronger resolution than the one introduced by John Boehner.   John Boehner may even have introduced his resolution as a last-ditch effort to allow Obama one last chance to avoid a constitutional challenge.  The following article by the Christian Science Monitor is excellent:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Libya-vote-How-Speaker-Boehner-preserved-GOP-unity-and-US-NATO-ties

No matter how this turns out, it is a serious blow to the Obama Presidency.  He now has two choices.  He can come to congress with hat in hand, or he is likely to be facing a serious and immediate constitutional crisis.  It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court sitting this one out, and Obama may have more to fear from the liberal justices than the conservative justices.  The implications are enormous if the War Powers Act is declared unconstitutional.   If it is constitutional, the President just deliberately violated the constitution.

Other Presidents were far too smart to get boxed into this kind of corner.  Instead, they reached out to congress and, without admitting the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, they yielded enough to keep congress happy.  Obama has done the exact opposite.  He publicly defied congress and said he did not want or need their approval.  That angered people in both parties.

This was very unnecessary.  Obama had support for what he was doing in Libya.  He would have gotten more support from Republicans than from Democrats.  They just wanted him to at least pretend to consult them.  But Obama is so arrogant that he decided to just thumb his nose at congress.

Perhaps Obama will get lucky and take out Ghadafi within the next 14 days.  But if I were advising Ghadafi, I would tell him that if he just hunkers down in the deepest bunker for two weeks Obama will have to quit.  I think the odds of getting Ghadafi just went way down.  The only exit strategy I can imagine is for Obama is to find some excuse to declare victory, give a great speech patting himself on the back, then quickly shut down combat operations.  But if Ghadafi is still in power, that will be very difficult.  Our NATO allies have to be furious with Obama.

 The main stream media is ignoring this story, but that will change dramatically in a short period of time if congress invokes the War Powers Act and forces a constitutional crisis.

 TDM

Some of you are probably concerned that according to the main stream media, Obama is coasting toward re-election.  CNN recently reported a poll allegedly showing that Obama now has a 54% approval rating.  At the same time they are dismissing the field of Republican Presidential candidates as weak and uninteresting.

The truth is quite the opposite.  Obama is in serious trouble and unless something changes, he has little chance of re-election.  You don’t have to take my word for it, just read the “real” information in that same CNN story:

 The poll, which asked about Obama’s job on 11 issues, showed that his approval rating was higher than 50 percent on just three items: terrorism (65 percent), Afghanistan (55 percent) and Iraq (54 percent).

His four weakest areas were gas prices (25 percent), the deficit (34 percent), health care (40 percent) and the economy (41 percent).

Obama’s approval rating is only high in areas where he continues to follow policies originated by George Bush.  In every other area, his job performance is being panned by the American people.  Every possible Republican candidate for President will get higher ratings than Obama with regard to terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq.  No amount of main stream media spin can change that simple reality.

The following article from the UK Telegraph does a good analysis of Obama’s serious disconnect with the American people.  Unfortunately, very few U.S. News organization are capable of this kind of reporting and analysis.  Even Fox News seems to be afraid to tell the truth about Obama:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100090356/why-barack-obama-may-be-heading-for-electoral-disaster-in-2012/

What is obviously true is obviously true! 

At some point, even the main stream media is going to be forced to deal with the truth about Obama.  Someone just sent me the following.  First is the statement from George Bush after the capture of Saddam Hussein.  The second is the statement from Barack Obama after the death of Osama bin Laden:

George W. Bush speech after capture of Saddam:

The success of yesterday’s mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.  The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people.  Their work continues, and so do the risks.  Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate ’em.

The only reference Bush made to himself was to say:  “I thank….”

Barack Obama speech after killing of bin Laden:

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.  Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.  It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.  I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.  And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and I authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.  Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Obama was so busy patting himself on the back that he almost forgot to thank the Navy Seals.  The contrast between the characters of the two men could not be starker.

The problem facing this country today is that if we are unable to discern the difference between a George Bush and a Barack Obama, then we are doomed as a nation.  Many people were fooled because Barack Obama is a good actor and he effectively played the role of a President on TV.   In this case, he didn’t even do a good job of acting like a President.   The truth is obvious to those willing to see.     

 I remember Alan Colmes and Sean Hannity having an amazing conversation on television shortly after 9-11.  Anyone familiar with Alan Colmes knows that he is a full-fledged liberal KoolAid drinker who rarely has a rational comment about anything.  But on this night, while Colmes was still badly shaken by 9-11, he said, “I’m glad George Bush is President of the United States.”  He never came close to saying that again, and I am sure he would deny having ever said it.  But he did, and I remember watching it happen.

George Bush, despite all the negative coverage in the press, is a real leader.  Barack Obama, despite all the fawning coverage in the press, is not.  I think the American people already know that.  Eventually, even CNN will figure it out.

TDM

Congressman Anthony Weiner was always a whiner and is apparently a wiener.  This is the guy who hypervented on national TV about how all those mean and nasty Republicans wouldn’t vote to approve benefits for 9-11 emergency responders.  CNN and the rest of the main stream media failed to notice that Democrats had overwhelming control of congress at the time and could have passed this without a single Republican vote.  The reason Republicans and those Democrats with remaining brain cells blocked this bill was that liberal Democrats had loaded it up with pork.

But now Weiner was caught with his pants down, or at least with his underwear showing.  There are reports that he send a lewd picture of himself to a 21 year old “friend.”  I don’t know if Weiner did this or not, but when challenged by CNN today he looked guilty as sin.  He gave a lengthy and convoluted explanation as to why he couldn’t answer the following question:  “did you send that lewd picture from your twitter account.”  Weiner wiggled, waffled and weaved in a painful attempt to avoid answering with a simple yes or no.  It was so bad that even CNN noticed.  Then they asked why the recently married congressman was following a 21 year old female on twitter.  Good question!

I am not sure Weiner survives this, not because Democrats really care about minor issues like personal morality, but because he just looked so pathetic in handling it.  It will be really hard for anyone to take him seriously after this fiasco.

Last year, CNN was literally replaying his speech comparing him to Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith goes to Washington.  At the time they ignored the fact that he was lying and screaming utter nonsense.  In the minds of the main stream media, bad mouthing Republicans always deserves recognition.

Now, they are laughing at him.  Sometimes, what goes around comes around.  When it does, it is important to sit back, watch and enjoy.

TDM