"It was a bit dissonant last night to walk out of the theater after watching 'Selma'--a film about a man of peace who was murdered by a sniper--and stumble upon long line of people waiting to watch a film glorifying an American sniper who murdered hundreds." - From the Sewer Known as Tumblr
"I saw American Sniper last night, and hated it slightly less than I expected to. Like most Clint Eastwood movies – and I like Clint Eastwood movies for the most part – it's a simple, well-lit little fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie that serves up a neatly-arranged helping of cheers and tears for target audiences, and panics at the thought of embracing more than one or two ideas at any time." - Rolling Stone MagazineBut then again, these are the same people who voted for a President who graciously interrupts his golf outings to be interviewed by a lunatic that looks like she just blew the Jolly Green Giant and eats Froot Loops out of a bathtub full of milk.......
In the wake of the total surrender of the Yemeni government to Iran-allied Houthi rebels, the U.S. State Department has had only one profoundly unhelpful message: We don’t know what we’re doing, and neither do you, so refrain from speculating about it. This message was delivered to Washington reporters by seasoned State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki as the resignation of Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi (pictured) was unfolding and his home was being shelled.
As quoted by the New York Times:
“We’re not in a position — and I don’t think any of you are either — to assess what it means at this point in time.”
Despite Jen’s terse instructions not to think about it, I’d wager there are many good conclusions that we can draw from the events in Yemen. One is the simple fact that this is a spectacular failure for the Obama White House and its policies in the Middle East. The other is the nature of the striking betrayal that happened in the final hours of the collapse. According to Sebastian Usher, BBC:
"The resignation of the Yemeni president and his government is likely to plunge an already unstable country into uncharted territory.
It comes just a day after a deal was announced between the president and the Houthi rebels that was meant to paper over the sharpest edges of the current crisis.
The rebels received the concessions they demanded. For their part, they were meant to withdraw from the presidential palace and from Mr Hadi’s own house, as well as releasing a presidential aide they abducted last week.
They have done none of this. Mr Hadi and his government say they cannot continue under such conditions. Yemen was already close to chaos – now it seems it has no president and no government..."
I’m not referring to the obvious betrayal of the Houthi rebels. Everyone knew they would not keep any agreements after they had gained the upper hand militarily.
What I mean by betrayal is that Hadi’s government followed the recipe of appeasement that the U.S. State Department forced on them. Giving the rebels everything they wanted and then expecting them to back off was Obama’s strategy, and the Hadi government followed the script to perfection. Now they have paid for it with their utter destruction.
My question is, who will hold the U.S. State Department accountable for this failure? The Yemeni government that they supported is now in no position to do so.
On Tuesday night, President Obama defiantly gave Americans the single finger salute as he vowed to veto any legislation that diminishes Obamacare, Dodd-Frank or his unilateral amnesty action done through the stroke of a pen with an Executive Order.
Obama tried to paint an economic picture embellished with a rosy glow of unreal accomplishments from a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, and booming energy production.
The economy has had the slowest recession recovery in 70 years. The American economy is still in a fragile state and has not returned to the growth rate of previous recession recovery periods.
The claim of shrinking deficits is only true in the context of Obama having run up the deficit greater than any other president before him and only now has deficit spending begun to slow down.
Industry has grown, not because of Obama policy, but despite the crushing policies of Obama's agencies inflicting onerous and costly regulations on American industry.
Finally, booming energy production is due to the private sector which has increased crude oil and natural gas production 67% on private and state lands compared to a measly growth rate of only 6% on federal lands. And even that growth rate on federal lands only occurred because of private lawsuits brought against the Obama administration in federal court forcing federal regulatory agencies to do their job of approving oil and gas leases on federal land according to federal law.
Again, Obama perfunctorily injected several personal homilies of Americans in distress as he does in his major speeches. The SOTU speech had the same humdrum feel of his many campaign stump speeches of the past. President Obama did not lay out a cogent and coherent plan to bring along America into the inevitable future it will face either domestically with the economy, the area of foreign relations or national security in the face of the greatest challenge to American liberty and freedom with Islamist terrorists around the world.
Obama once again played the divide and conquer game of pitting the wealthy against the middle class and the poor, by calling for raising taxes on the wealthy to redistribute their wealth, as if the wealth of America is static and the wealthy have stolen wealth from the poor and middle class to attain their "unearned" wealth in the form of tax loopholes like capital gains compared to "earned" income of the working class.
What liberals refuse to acknowledge is that without the wealthy investing and putting their wealth "at risk" of losing value, there would be little economic growth in America. Wealthy Americans are rewarded only when their risks are overcome by good business decisions in the private sector. The working class does not have the same risk, since their reward is an immediate return for their labor and cannot be recalled should their employers fail to make a profit.
Raising taxes for any purpose at a time when the American economy is still in such a fragile state borders on malfeasance of Obama's leadership. Obama's plan, like all historical liberalism, is to raise taxes, borrow more money and then to throw that money at the problem of income disparity. Basically, Obama is seeking to reward his constituency at the expense of the producers who foot the bill for his delusions of Marxist socialist wealth redistribution.
With Obama, it's always more "cowbell" government spending over and over again. With a Republican Congress, I expect there will be no "cowbell" spending, the likes of which we have seen in the past six years.
