Foreign Policy Fiddling:

"Barack Obama is fiddling while the world burns. Iraq, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria. These foreign wildfires, with more surely to come, will burn unabated for two years until the United States has a new president. The one we've got can barely notice or doesn't care. ... 

The big Obama bet is that Americans' opinion-polled 'fatigue' with the world (if not his leadership) frees him to create a progressive domestic legacy. This Friday Mr. Obama is giving a speech to the Sioux Indians in Cannon Ball, N.D., about 'jobs and education.'

Meanwhile, Iraq may be transforming into (a) a second Syria or (b) a restored caliphate. Past some point, the world's wildfires are going to consume the Obama legacy. And leave his successor a nightmare." - Daniel Henninger WSJ

Obama Adds Award to His Prestigious List of Accomplishments

h/t Odie

“Mae-Mae” Burbank's funeral just like she lived life - smoking, drinking, partying and living off the taxpayers!

“Mae-Mae” Burbank passed away last week. The woman’s two daughters said their mother was “full of life” and they wanted her funeral to reflect her life. The sisters told the funeral home directors at Charbonnet Funeral Home in New Orleans about their mother and planners came up with a way to honor Mae-Mae and sent her off in style. 

At the funeral, Momma Mae Mae was propped up at a table in a living room setting holding her favorite things, a menthol cigarette and a glass of beer. A crossword puzzle and Saints helmets were also featured on the table.

I though the revolving colored light balls were a nice touch......

Worse Than We Could Even Have Imagined

"Barack Obama spoke on Iraq earlier today, pledging to do nothing and essentially saying nothing, even as that nation is breaking apart, with Islamic militants overrunning Iraq and vowing to capture Baghdad.

In light of the unfolding disaster in Iraq, which is linked to the unfolding disaster in Syria, which is part of a broader failure in the Middle East, which is only one part of an across-the-board failure in foreign policy, which is separate from the failures at home–including healthcare.gov and ObamaCare more broadly, chronically high unemployment, the stimulus and “shovel ready jobs,” a historically weak economic recovery, the lowest workforce participation rate since the 1970s, increasing income inequality, and record poverty–the following needs to be said. Even those of us who were highly critical of Mr. Obama early on, who twice voted against him and worked in campaigns to defeat him, could not envision how epically incompetent he would be.

The harm this man has done is immeasurable. And he still has more than two years left to go. Mr. Obama belongs in a category all his own." - Peter Wehner , Commentary Mag.

Résille Vendredi

The Reviews are in....Yeah, it Sucks.

These Amazon reviews for Hillary Clinton’s new book are HILARIOUS

On to Baghdad....

"The black flags of al-Qaeda are flying over Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, just as they do over Fallujah. Al-Qaeda affiliated militants are now pressing their offensive into other parts of western Iraq and possibly beyond. This growing threat to our national security interests is the cost of President Obama’s decision to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq in 2011, against the advice of our commanders and regardless of conditions on the ground.

Unfortunately, the president is now making the same disastrous mistake in Afghanistan, increasing the risk that al-Qaeda and its terrorist allies will return there just as they are in Iraq...."

"The president needs to explain to Congress and the American people how he plans to address the growing threat to our homeland and our national security interests posed by the rapidly expanding al-Qaeda safe haven in Iraq and Syria" - Bridget Johnson, PJ Media 

And Steny Ho Ho calls Republicans Dysfunctional?

Steny Hoyer, the number two Democrat in the House, said Eric Cantor's Republican primary defeat shows the Republican party to "deeply divided and dysfunctional."

Dysfunctional?

Mr. Hoyer, what's "dysfunctional" is a political party that ignores its own party's president usurping Congressional authority as he enacts more major executive orders than any other president in history, orders well outside of executive branch prerogatives.

What's dysfunctional is a political party that is utterly silent in the face of its party's president lying and covering up to the nation on various scandals such as Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS abuses, ignoring the law on the Gitmo releases, etc. any one of which you'd impeach a Republican president for.

What's dysfunctional is a party which is perfectly content to watch its president abuse his power all because its more important for your party to hold and hopefully (to you) keep the White House than that power be held and used honorably, with integrity and as the constitution allows.

What's dysfunctional is a party continuing to defend the most unpopular piece of domestic legislation in a generation, Obamacare, and probably the most damaging to the economy and to American healthcare, and to continue to march in lock step in spinning and misrepresenting the effectiveness of the law while the data continues to pile in showing it to be an utter train wreck.

What's dysfunctional is continuing to provide full back up to the president's lying about this law and continuing to allow him to arbitrarily implement and interpret it on the fly as he pleases and as dictated by political necessity despite the CLEAR INTENT OF THE LAW, changing implementation dates, employer penalty provisions, etc. and not uttering a peep as he acts as both president and legislature in doing so.

Dysfunction is looking away from such presidential abuses and marching in lock step rather than exercising COURAGE to call him on his outrageous behavior, much of it driven by political expediency as he sees it and the need to bring up his poll numbers.

Dysfunction is not holding errant leaders accountable as the people of Virginia's 7th district did yesterday. It's refusing to hold them accountable because you're all so enamored of your power that you can't possibly criticize your own president because to do so might help the other side take away the precious power that's become the thing you're most loyal to, and obsessed with, rather than loyalty to your constituents, your oath of office and most of all to your nation.

Down And Out In Chappaqua

image via Ricochet

Dick Morris

Hillary Clinton likes to present herself as an everywoman, facing the same challenges that bedevil all families, living in sync with their trials and tribulations, overcoming adversity as we all try to do. The latest iteration of her wish to downplay her wealth so as to be just plain folks was her bald assertions to Diane Sawyer that she and Bill were “dead broke” and “in debt” when she left the White House, struggling to “you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy.”

Consider this:

* Her joint tax return with Bill for 2001 showed a $16,165,110.00 income for her first year out of the White House.

* Even before they left the White House, their joint income for 2000 was $359,000, scarcely in the “dead broke” category, particularly when you consider that the Clintons had none of the normal expenses that the rest of us do. Housing, cars, child care, insurance, electricity, landscaping, health care, these are all covered by the taxpayers. All they had to pay for was dry cleaning, food and college tuition for Chelsea. Most people could make that work.

* She signed a book contract with an $8 million advance in the closing weeks of Bill’s presidency, and Bill inked a $15 million deal at about the same time. She got over $2 million of this in 2001. Is that dead broke?

* The Clintons bought a house in September of 1999 in Chappaqua for $1.7 million.

* In December of 2000, they also purchased a $2.85 million house in Washington, D.C., before Bill left office. Do people who are dead broke and in debt do this?

* Chelsea, had graduated from college by the end of Bill’s term and her tuition for graduate work at Oxford for the year 2001 could not have been too burdensome for a family that would earn $16 million that year.

So why does she do this? Why make up stories of poverty when they were verifiable multi-millionaires? Does her need to misrepresent her circumstances on the public stage bespeak a fundamental disregard for the truth and a confidence that she can manipulate our feelings as surely as any soap opera actress?

Hillary has always felt the need to adjust the truth of her extraordinary circumstances — up or down — to suit her political needs of the moment. 

When Teleprompters Go bad......

Homo Destructus out of natural habitat