By now most of us are familiar with the Sign Language Interpreter who stood next to Obama and other World Leaders at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.  It turned out that this man didn’t actually know sign language.  That apparently was not a requirement for the position.  The Saturday Night Live skit about this is beyond hysterical.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/12/16/obama-saturday-night-live-mandela-raul-castro/4037637/

This guy never even thought he was competent.  He just realized that it wasn’t necessary to actually know how to do the job.  In the following interview he explained that no one really cared if he was competent.  He just needed to get one job and from then on people assumed that he was qualified for the next one.  It is an amazing story that borders on hilarious.

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten/2013/12/13/the-eloquence-of-the-fake-signing-man/

The parallel between the fake interpreter and Obama is interesting.

In South Africa, the signing man told the world, you don’t actually have to know what you are doing in order to get a job. You don’t have to have any ability whatsoever, as long as it looks, to most, as though you can go through the motions — whether you are a teacher, a police officer, a bureaucrat, a government official or (as some have suggested) a state president.

This is true when running for President of the United States as long as you are a liberal Democrat

There are those who see through you and complain, but they are ignored.

How many times did people try and warn us about Obama?

You stand there and tell us that the appearance of something becomes more important than the substance of it.

The main stream media bought into the Obama myth hook line and sinker.  People assumed he was competent because people assumed he was competent.

Your obvious inability to do your job does not prevent you from getting ahead, until you reach the most prominent stage in the world, and then pretending suddenly isn’t enough. Too many people noticed — too many people who couldn’t just be dismissed because of their politics or race, which is how criticism is normally dealt with.

Obama got away with this because anyone who dared criticize him was labeled as racist.  No one bothered to find out the truth.

The author is astonished at the culture of incompetence in South Africa.  This is pretty amazing.  People wonder how this guy managed to be the interpreter for all those world leaders.  But I have to ask the obvious question.  If this is bad, and it is beyond bad, isn’t it a lot worse to elect someone totally incompetent to be President of the United States?  There was zero evidence that Obama was competent when he ran in 2008.  There was even less evidence that he was competent when he ran for re-election in 2012.  Yet no one noticed the obvious until the obvious became too obvious to ignore.  Now we have a President of the United States who will be in office for at least three more years and no one in either party even pretends that he is up to the job.  That is a lot bigger problem than an incompetent interpreter.

What could possibly make this worse?  Easy.  Vice President Joe Biden is next in line..

In some ways one could make a better case for Thamsanqu Jantjie.  At least he knew he was incompetent.

TDM

Republicans, Democrats and the main stream media are all thrilled with the new budget deal.  Republicans are pleased because they feared another budget showdown would hurt them politically.  Republicans believe Democrats are poised for a landslide loss in 2014 because of ObamaCare and they don’t want to risk distracting from that.  Democrats are happy because they get to continue spending money and they get to raise taxes.  The main stream media is satisfied because they believe continuation of the status quo is the highest value.

However, the only people who should matter just got shafted.  No one in either party thinks this is a good budget.  They know we are on borrowed time and this budget solves nothing.  The problem was just kicked farther down the road, to be dealt with later, at a much higher cost.  Once again our elected representatives put their own interests ahead of the American people.

Rasmussen just ran a survey about the most influential person in the world.   Ted Cruz came in third, behind the Pope and President Obama.  I believe this is because Ted Cruz has proven that he will fight for what he considered to be important, even when there was no chance of victory.  He stood on his feet for all those hours because he could not let ObamaCare go into force without at least putting up a fight.

Peter O’Toole just died.  I couldn’t help but think back on his career and the theme to the Man of Le Mancha.  This was the movie about Don Quixote.  The words of this song are a good reminder that our heroes should not be those who take the easy road out, but rather those who stand and fight for what matters:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true 
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

Don Quixote was chasing imaginary enemies.  Sometimes this is called “Tilting Toward Windmills.”  But this time the enemies are all too real and there is no virtue in pretending there is no threat.   Sometimes, we do reach the unreachable star, but you can’t possibly do that if you are too afraid to try.  Perhaps someone should explain this to the Republican establishment.

TDM

The “Cheese State” has struck again.  When Governor Scott Walker took on the public sector unions in Wisconsin he appeared to be playing with fire.  The backlash was instant and overwhelming.  Remember all those teachers swarming the Capital in Madison.   Liberals fought back with every tool in their bag of tricks.  They even imported paid activists from Chicago.  It didn’t work.  Walker didn’t back down an inch.  So, then Democrats tried to recall him.

Democrats were so sure that voters would reject Walker’s reforms that they were still predicting victory on election night, long after the media had called the election for Scott Walker by a wide margin.  This is typical of the liberal mindset.  They couldn’t bring themselves to believe what was obviously true:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/scott-walker-recall-election-results_n_1572532.html

Not only did Walker win that election, the labor unions suffered a serious, potentially fatal defeat.  By July of 2013, The Wisconsin Education Association Council has lost half of its 98,000 members.  It turns out that when given a choice, a lot of people chose not to continue paying dues to a union that often did not represent their best interests:

http://eagnews.org/thousands-of-employees-are-quitting-public-sector-unions-in-wisconsin/

Now Scott Walker has a new plan and it is brilliant.  Instead of giving money to the government, Walker would give money to people and allow them to purchase health care from private insurance companies.   They can just ignore the ObamaCare exchange.  He is still giving people money, which will offend a lot of conservatives, but at least he is giving them a choice in how it is spent.  Even MSNBC is intrigued:

http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/scott-walker-finds-alternative-medicaid

Hmmm.  Let people “choose” between government insurance and private insurance.  What is the world coming to? Ask the government to compete on price and/or service?  Please!

Expect the liberal left and the Obama administration to respond with outrage. But ObamaCare sucks big time and a lot of Democrats are desperately in search of Susan.   Ok, not exactly Susan, but they are desperately searching for a way out.  This will be attractive to at least some of them.  At this point, anything that even looks like a solution will be attractive to them.  Some Democrats in Wisconsin have already signed on to the Walker plan.  And you still don’t believe in miracles?  As they say, any port in a storm and this is one heck of a storm.

There is zero chance the Obama administration can rescue ObamaCare.  They aren’t even ready to admit there’s a problem.  There is no way that you can fix a problem if you won’t even admit there is a problem.  But there is a big problem and it isn’t going away anytime soon.  No amount of main stream media spin can paper over this disaster.  On January 1, 2014, a lot of people are going to wake up to a healthcare hangover that aspirin won’t touch.

Scott Walker has a plan.  It is astonishingly simple, which is why no Democrat even considered it.  The government can’t fix this, so let’s take the money away from the government and give it to someone who can fix it.  This seems pretty obvious to me.

Everyone else is dancing around the real issue.  Walker nailed it on the head.  Government can’t solve the problem when government is the problem.  Take government out of the picture and things suddenly come back into focus.

Wisconsin.  Pretty darn cold at the moment but one really hot idea.  Get the picture?  Smile at the camera and say “cheese.”   “On Wisconsin!”

TDM

Most people, remotely familiar with our financial markets, know that a large portion of our current problems was the result of deregulation of the insurance and banking industry.  Almost without exception George Bush gets the blame for deregulating the financial markets.  But, this accusation is absurd, because deregulation took place during the Clinton years.  It was passed just in time for Robert Rubin to cash in big time at Citi-Corp.

In case you doubt this, read the transcript of an interview of Bill Clinton by Jay Tapper in 2010:

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/president-clinton-i-was-wrong-listen

You will notice that the title of this website is “crooks and liars.”  The transcript was published here because Bill Clinton was lying about his own involvement.  But, what Clinton admits is devastating enough.

Well, I think on the derivatives – before the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, it had been breached. There was already a total merger practically of commercial and investment banking, and really the main thing that the Glass-Steagall Act did was to give us some power to regulate it

Clinton is admitting that the financial crisis was brought about by deregulating the derivatives market.  What he was lying about is his own role in this.  He is also lying about his interest in regulating banks and insurance.  Clinton is now claiming he was “tricked into doing this because Robert Rubin and Larry Summers gave him bad advice.

Clinton even admits that this was the primary cause of our financial problems over the next eight years:

Now, on derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take it because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency. The money they’re putting up guarantees them transparency. And the flaw in that argument was that first of all sometimes people with a lot of money make stupid decisions and make it without transparency.

 And secondly, the most important flaw was even if less than 1 percent of the total investment community is involved in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could affect a 100 percent of the investments, and indeed a 100 percent of the citizens in countries, not investors, and I was wrong about that. I’ve said that all along. Now, I think if I had tried to regulate them because the Republicans were the majority in the Congress, they would have stopped it. But I wish I should have been caught trying. I mean, that was a mistake I made.

 Charles Ferguson explained the extent of the lie by Clinton in the following article:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/hillary-clinton-documentary_b_4014792.html

Ferguson was the man hired to write the screen play for a puff Hillary documentary on CNN.  He quickly discovered that he could not tell the truth and puff Hillary at the same time.  The following paragraph about Bill Clinton is very revealing:

Mr. Clinton sorrowfully lamented his inability to stop the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of private (OTC) derivatives trading, and thereby greatly worsened the crisis. Mr. Clinton said that he and Larry Summers had argued with Alan Greenspan, but couldn’t budge him, and then Congress passed the law by a veto-proof supermajority, tying his hands. Well, actually, the reason that the law passed by that overwhelming margin was because of the Clinton Administration’s strong advocacy, including Congressional testimony by Larry Summers and harsh public and private attacks on advocates of regulation by Summers and Robert Rubin.

In the interview with Jay Tapper, Clinton blamed Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.  The same Robert Rubin he called the best Treasury Secretary in history.

Currently, Clinton, Rubin and Summers all claim they were secretly opposed to the strategy they were collectively jamming down people’s throats in the later 1990s.

This is far from a dead subject.  We still aren’t regulating this.  The following article in the Insurance Journal explains how Dodd-Frank is trying to use the Volcker rule to repair some of the damage:

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2013/12/09/313372.htm

The following paragraph explains the situation quite well:

The view that deregulation of the financial industry in the 1990s was a prime cause of the 2008 crisis resonates with both Democrats and Republicans, and many of their proposed remedies have drawn support in both parties

If both political parties have figured this out, why does the liberal left, Barack Obama and the main stream media continue to get away with blaming all our financial problems on George Bush?  The answer is unfortunately obvious.  Republicans had a majority in the House and the Senate in 1999, so they share much of the blame.  Clinton could not have repealed Glass-Steagall without Republican support.  It was easier for people in both parties to just blame Bush.  This was a bi-partisan mistake.

It is the ultimate tragedy that Barack Obama gained and retained power primarily by blaming all our financial problems on George W. Bush. Bush didn’t de-regulate the financial markets, Clinton did that.  It was Bush who tried to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.   He was blocked by Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, the co-authors of Dodd-Frank.  Talk about hiring the fox to protect the chickens.

We cannot possibly fix the problem until we are ready to tell the truth about the problem.  One important truth is that Republicans currently in the House and/or the Senate who were there in 1999 are part of the problem.  This is the true face of the Republican establishment.

TDM

Arthur Godfrey was a broadcaster and entertainer who lived from 1903 to 1983. He had a unique voice and he was easy to believe.  He claimed that he would never promote a product unless he personally believed in it.  His on-the-air personality was of the friendly next door neighbor you could trust.  Soon people began to feel that “if Godfrey said it, it must be so.”  He sold a lot of stuff and made CBS a ton of money.

At one point, he was considered to be one announcer that everyone trusted.  He also had a voice that was very recognizable and difficult to imitate.  There were rumors that President Dwight Eisenhower asked Godfrey to record several public service announcements to be played on American Television in the event of nuclear war.  Eisenhower believed that Arthur Godfrey, along with Edward R. Morrow, was uniquely qualified to give Americans important information during a time of crisis.  Those rumors turned out to be more than rumors, when in 2004 former CBS President Dr. Frank Stanton confirmed the existence of the tapes during an interview. (Source…conelrad.com)

Like most celebrities, what you see in public does not always match the off-the-air personality.  I won’t go into the gory details, but by the end of his career Arthur Godfrey was a long way from being the most trusted man in America.

Eisenhower was right about one thing.  During a time of crisis, it really matters that people know who to trust.  Many of us still remember when John F. Kennedy spoke on national television about the Cuban missile crisis.  That situation would have been much worse if people were not willing to trust what Kennedy was saying.

Now, if we have a huge crisis, we will be dealing with an administration that cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.  There have been too many lies.  That is one reason all the main stream media outlets are running stories about Barack Obama’s Uncle Omar.  Normally no one would care about a 69-year-old man from Kenya who has been living here, illegally, for over 50 years.   Who cares!  But Uncle Omar is headline news because this administration was caught in a bald-faced lie about him.

In August of 2011, Uncle Omar got caught driving while under the influence.  It turned out that he had a deportation notice dating back to 1992.  Uncle Omar allegedly told the police he would just call his nephew in the White House to straighten things out.

At some point the White House went on record saying they would not be involved in Uncle Omar’s case.  They also said that there was no record of Barack Obama ever meeting his uncle.  That was a lie.   Just this week Uncle Omar testified, under oath, that Barack Obama had lived with him for several weeks while getting ready to attend Harvard.  The White House tried to explain the discrepancy by claiming that no one had actually asked Barack Obama about this in 2011.  I doubt that very many people are buying this.

Bill Clinton looked the American people in the eye and lied.  I remember one commentator at the time saying that if Clinton was lying he was through.  That turned out to be wrong.  Ultimately Democratic Senators decided that since Clinton was only lying about sex, it didn’t really matter.  Of course lying always matters, which is why liberal Democrats still try desperately to prove that Bush lied.  The difference between Bush and Clinton is that there is indisputable documentation that Clinton lied and there is indisputable documentation that Bush didn’t lie.  That distinction, however, is lost on many liberal democrats.  They “want” to believe that Bush lied, so they just ignore the facts.

Obama has been caught lying and it is a lie that really matters.  That is why the Uncle Omar story matters.  This country started out with “In God We Trust.”  Then, thanks to the advent of television, we moved to “In Godfrey We Trust.”  Now we are at a point where we don’t know who to trust.  But we do know something very important.  We know we can’t trust Barack Obama.

TDM

In 1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Law.  It prohibited the teaching of evolution in our public schools.  John Thomas Scopes was convinced by the ACLU to challenge the law in court.  The result was a very public show trial with Clarence Darrow, a famous criminal attorney representing Scopes and William Jennings Bryant, a dying politician, assisting in the prosecution.  It was a fiasco from start to finish.  The following link provides interesting details on the trial:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/inherit/1925home.html

The typical liberal spin on the case is that Clarence Darrow carried the day by humiliating Bryant:

“You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven’t you, Mr. Bryan?”
“Yes, sir; I have tried to … But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy.”
“Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?”
“I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there …”
Darrow continued to question Bryan on the actuality of Jonah and the whale, Joshua’s making the sun stand still and the Tower of Babel, as Bryan began to have more difficulty answering.
Q: “Do you think the earth was made in six days?”
A: “Not six days of 24 hours … My impression is they were periods …”
Q: “Now, if you call those periods, they may have been a very long time?”
A: “They might have been.”
Q: “The creation might have been going on for a very long time?”
A: “It might have continued for millions of years …”

The sad reality is that largely as a result of this fiasco, our children have been force-fed the theory of evolution for decades.  Clarence Darrow has been deified and William Jennings Bryant dismissed as an ignorant, out-of-touch right-wing Christian buffoon.  One will note that Clarence Darrow was literally picking on a dying man.  Bryant died five days after the trial was over.

During the 2008 primary season Republican candidates were constantly questioned about their view of evolution.  The New York Post ran a major article about this, as did most of the main stream media:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2011/08/evolution_gop_candidates.html

For example:  Rick Perry was dismissed as too stupid to be President because he said that:  “evolution is merely a theory that’s out there, with some gaps.”

The New York Post was: “Shocked to witness a Presidential candidate question the validity of one of the most basic and universally accepted tenets of science?”

This is mind boggling stupidity here, by the New York Post.  Our children are taught that all of life started when a couple of amino acids accidently bumped uglies setting off a miraculous chain of events.  Scientists are not sure how this happened, but they are absolutely certain that no creator was involved.  This miraculous conception was followed by millions of other undocumented and high improbable miracles resulting in the magnificent world we see today.

In reality evolution itself is evolving because every time they find a new fossil they have to revise the theory to make up for inconsistent facts.  The latest example of this was found in the following New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?_r=0

Notice how scientists are now “rethinking” human evolution over the past few hundred thousand years.  They even propose that there may be many extinct human populations that scientists have yet to discover.  Oh how easy it is for scientists to assume that all the gaps in any unproven theory is explained by things yet to be discovered.  Please!

I believe that if a Scopes trial was held today and an evolutionist was put on the stand and questioned by someone like Clarence Darrow they would make William Jennings Bryant look like a Rhodes Scholar.  The reality is that in spite of academia preaching the gospel of evolution for decades the vast majority of Americans aren’t buying it.  According to the following article only 21% of Americans believe that modern humans evolved without some kind of divine intervention:

http://today.yougov.com/news/2013/07/22/belief-in-evolution-up-since-2004

The majority of folks aren’t buying this crap because the vast majority of them recognize crap.  I wish just one Republican candidate for President would have responded by saying:  “what an incredibly stupid question.  Perhaps a better question is why you believe in evolution in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it?”  Why do Republicans get defensive when asked really stupid questions?  Granted the majority of the main stream media swallows evolution hook line and sinker.  They also swallow global warming hook line and sinker. The liberal media believes a lot of things that aren’t true.

We need more people willing to challenge the status quo.  When you think about it, the theory of evolution is absurd.  The only reason scientists cling to the random chance theory is that all other explanations require a creator.  The theory of evolution only makes sense if you start with the assumption that no intelligent design is possible.

Let me explain this in more simple terms.  Suppose a future civilization lands on earth 1,000 years from now.  Humans have pretty much wiped out everything, so the only thing they find is a 1998 Ford Explorer.  The aliens look at this vehicle and they are intrigued by the design.  They notice how all the parts fit together and the engine powers the entire vehicle.  They wonder how this happened.  One of them decides that there must have been some intelligent creature that made this machine.  But, that alien is shouted down by other, more cultured aliens who point out that there is no possibility of intelligent life on earth.  Any theory explaining how the Ford Explorer came to be must not include intelligent design.  So, finally in desperation, one alien comes up with the theory of evolution.  The Ford Explorer started with two pieces of iron ore accidently rubbed against each other while blown around by the wind.  Over millions of years similar things kept happening all over the world eventually coming together at just the right time in just the right place to make a Ford Explorer.   Sounds pretty good until a little later they find a Ferrari.

As it says at the top of this blog:   “What is obviously true is obviously true.”

TDM

In the book of Daniel, the story of told of King Belshazzar and the writing on the wall.  The King was having a gay ole time, drinking wine with his Lords when suddenly a hand appeared and started writing on the wall.  The words were:

מנא, מנא, תקל, ופרסין

Ok, perhaps you prefer the version in the King James Bible:

Mene mene tekel upharsin

When I was a child, I could never remember these words, so we changed them to read: “Meanie, meanie he tickled the parson.”

Neither version made much sense to me at the time.  They also didn’t make much sense to King Belshazzar.  He freaked out.  He didn’t know what the words meant, but he knew it was bad.  So he gathered all of his senior advisors and offered a huge bonus to anyone who could interpret the words for him.  Finally, in an act of desperation, he called upon Daniel to see if he could make sense of it.

Daniel told the king that the words meant that the king had been weighed and found wanting and that he was about to lose his kingdom.  If you want to read the actual story, check out Daniel, Chapter 5.

I believe the writing is on the wall for the Obama administration.  He has been weighed and found wanting by just about everyone.  Conservatives are furious because of his drive toward socialism, his weak foreign policy and his willingness to ignore the constitution.  Liberals are furious because he botched ObamaCare, he botched his foreign policy and he didn’t totally ignore the constitution.  They are both united in the opinion that Obama is a disaster as a president.

ObamaCare is officially dead and buried.  The main stream media is still looking for some sign of life, but there is zero chance this will survive.  The final blow was when the new and improved website failed.  Jay Carney was at his press conference trying to put a positive spin on this.  He says things are much better because now, instead of the website crashing, visitors just get a queuing message saying telling them they could check back later.  This is so bad that we need a new stronger word to replace pathetic.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/12/02/carney_vs_ed_henry_on_obamacare_website_youre_confusing_error_messages_with_queuing_messages.html

ED HENRY: It sounds like you did not meet the deadline, the more I listen to your answers, because Ezekiel Emanuel said yesterday the website is working well and you say it is vastly improved. There has been significant progress. Not necessarily that it is working well and effectively for the vast majority of users, as you acknowledged with Jim and John and others. People are still getting the same error messages they got a couple days ago.

HENRY: The goal is obviously to enroll more people, right? If they are still waiting – 

Obama was an obvious failure from day one, but the main stream media refused to cover the story.  I am certain that a lot of senior Democrats knew this from the start too, but those who dared hint at a problem were humiliated.  Remember when Bill Clinton referred to the Obama candidacy as a joke?  The main stream media turned on him in a furious rage.  How dare anyone hint that Obama might not be up to the job?  Nothing scares a liberal Democrat more than being accused of being a racist.

None of the Obama narrative stood up to scrutiny, but there was no scrutiny.  The failure of the ObamaCare website changed everything.  This was the writing on the wall for this administration, because the failure became impossible to ignore.  I sometimes wonder if liberals realize that God also understands modern technology.

TDM

Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday.  He did this in the fall of 1863, when things were still pretty grim.  The Union Army had defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Gettysburg, but then the Confederate Army got away, again.  There was no evidence that the bloody civil war was about to end anytime soon.  So I had to ask, why was Lincoln so thankful?  He certainly wasn’t riding high politically.  Lincoln was facing opposition in both parties.  About the only thing people agreed on was that Lincoln was doing a lousy job as President.  He was so unpopular that he almost wasn’t even invited to speak at Gettysburg.  At the most he was expected to say a few, meaningless words.  Lincoln was still looking for a general who could lead the Union to victory.  So far, every General he had chosen was a miserable failure.  Even when the Union won a battle, the loss of life on both sides was beyond horrific.  Yet, Lincoln was grateful.  Following is the text of that Thanksgiving proclamation:

http://history1800s.about.com/od/abrahamlincoln/a/Lincoln-Thanksgiving-proclam.htm

Lincoln was thankful that the carnage of the civil war was unable to destroy the bountiful crops or the healthful skies.  He was grateful that no foreign country took advantage of our civil war to attack us.  He was thankful that the country continued to grow both in wealth and population and even the bloody civil war did not change that.  Lincoln recognized that these were unearned gifts from almighty God.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercys. 

It is so easy to point out everything that is wrong in the world today.  Only a naïve liberal fool would think that things are going well.  Pessimists are wondering how this country can even recover.  Our economy is pathetic.  We have become the laughingstock of the world.  The problems are very obvious and all too real.  But ultimately, God is still in control and what really matters will continue to matter tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and forever.  Our fields are indeed bountiful.  We continue to find the natural resources we need.  Men and women continue to marry, they continue to have children and they continue to raise families.  No government has ever been able to stop that.  While the world is truly a dangerous place, we live in a remarkably free society with a standard of living unimaginable in much of the world.  We are truly blessed.

Governments come and governments go.  No government is as strong as they think.   Good governments aren’t as great as we think and terrible governments aren’t as powerful as they seem.  All political power is fleeting.  The Bible reminds us that pride goes before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction.  It was true in the past.  It will be true in the future.  It is true now.  It is true when Conservatives are in power and it is true when Liberals are in power.

For this reason, I choose to be thankful.  I am thankful that the things that really matter are not subject to the whims of mortal man.  I am thankful that God is still on the throne and the future continues to look bright and promising.  Give thanks for what really matters.  The rest is just temporary anyway.

TDM

Just when you thought this administration was terminally stupid, they moved the idiot lever up another knotch.  John Kerry signed this great deal with Iran and Obama went on TV to celebrate peace in our time.  Almost imediately the deal was panned by most people remotely familiar with the subject.  Key Democrats, like Chuck Schumer rejected it immediately.  Benjamin Netanyahu threw a world class hissy fit.  This was only so bad that the only support came from the ever shrinking group of addicted KoolAid drinkers who continue to chant irrational talking points from the liberal hymn book.

Of course CNN ran a poll today saying that Americans support the deal 2 to 1.  My guess is that this was a push poll taken before it became obvious there is no deal.  Of course now we know that we don’t even have a bad deal.  We have no deal.   Iran issued a statement accusing the White House of deliberating distoring the terms of the agreement:

http://freebeacon.com/iran-white-house-lying-about-details-of-nuke-deal/

This reminds me of the scene from animal house where the boys borrowed Flounder’s car and then totally trashed it.  Their only excuse was that he was stupid to have trusted them in the first place.  Why would he have expected anything different?

We now know that the deal signed with Iran was not a deal at all, it was simply a deal to consider a deal.  In the meantime, we drop the sanctions and Iran proceeds full speed ahead on developing a nuclear bomb.  Nice!

I really don’t remember anything similar to this happening before.  At least Adolph Hitler waited a couple of months before he dismissed the Munich agreement as meaningless.  At the same time Obama is telling us we have to trust Iran, Iran is telling the world not to trust Obama.  Unfortunately, Iran probably got that one right.

TDM

John Kerry signed a peace agreement with Iran.  Obama gave a speech praising peace in our time.  But there is a huge problem.  I cannot recall a previous time when a U.S. President made such a deal without strong bi-partisan support.  There is a reason for that.  If a President speaks on an international issue and the country does not support him, he is finished.  How on earth can an administration have an ounce of international credibility if his own country will not support him?  Yet, in this case, Obama has already lost critical support and it is likely to get worse.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York is already on record opposing the deal and saying that he will discuss the possibility of congress bypassing the President and increasing sanctions on Iran.  Obama has been secretly removing sanctions for months.  This is an irreconcilable difference:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/24/schumer-iran-pact-does-not-seem-proportional/

This is a slap shot at the President of the United States by one of the most influential members of his own party.  But perhaps the most serious slap at this President came from Bob Schieffer.  Following is the link to the YouTube video of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cfOXFog54Q&feature=youtube_gdata

He asked the following stunning questions of Kevin McCarthy:

Is Iran Deal ‘Diversionary Tactic’ for Obama Admin?

One will note that McCarthy was more hesitant to throw President Obama under the bus than Chuck Schumer.  This is not because McCarthy approves of this deal, but rather that McCarthy knows the significant of opposing a President of the United States with regard to foreign policy.  Republicans have a strong tradition of backing a President, even if they disagree with him, because they strongly believe that politics should end at the nation’s borders.

The real problem here is that no one believes either President Obama or John Kerry.  We have simply been told one lie too many by this administration.  Even if they are right about this, which is open to debate, no one trusts them. How very sad.  At a time when this country desperately needs a President with real leadership ability, we have Barack Obama. So I thought, what could make me even more skeptical.  The following answers that question:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.559875

“We are all aware of the risks involved,” said Jimmy Carter. “But I am convinced that, after 35 years of animosity and distrust, there is an historic opportunity to rebuild relations with the government and people of Iran on solid foundations of mutual respect.”

Kofi Annan, the chairman of the Elders and former secretary-general of the UN, said he hoped the deal would be “swiftly followed up with practical measures to put the agreement into effect. “After years of inconclusive negotiations, this is an important step forward in restoring confidence between Iran and the international community,” Annan said.

When the most inept President, with the exception of Obama, in the history of the United States and the most inept Secretary General of the United Nations call this a great deal don’t expect good results.  It is hard to imagine why anyone would ever consider taking advice from Jimmy Carter on how to deal effectively with Iran.

TDM