The Next Looney Left Conspiracy Theory?

The AP is reporting that Russia knew in advanced about the chemical attack in Syria. Any bets on how long it will take for the looney Left to begin speculating that Trump also knew in advance? After all, he and Putin are BFFs, right?

You Learn Something New Every Day

Hundreds of high tech companies from Silicon Valley, the Seattle area and Minnesota filed a suit to block Trump's Executive Order temporarily banning Immigration from 7 predominantly Muslim countries (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia) claiming, in part, that it is "a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years," and "The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States."

Just to be clear we are talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia here.
I had no idea what fertile ground these countries are for recruiting high tech employees and as a source of investment capital.

Chalk this one up to "You learn something new every day."

What a steaming crock of excrement!

Russia A Regional Power: Yes But What Region Mr. Obama?

At a press conference yesterday at The Hague, Netherlands, ABC White House correspondant, Jonathan Karl, asked "Mr. President, . ... In China, in Syria, in Egypt, and now in Russia we've seen you make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored. Are you concerned that America's influence in the world -- that your influence in the world -- is on the decline? And in light of recent developments, do you think Mitt Romney had a point when he said that Russia is America's greatest geopolitical foe, if not Russia, who?" President Obama responded, Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not out of strength, but out of weakness. ... Karl's question was a truly good one but he missed a golden opportunity for a follow-up. If Russia is only a 'regional power' then what region would that be? Russia covers 11 time zones and 1/9th of the earth’s land area. It reaches from the North Pole to the Black Sea and from the well into the European continent in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. With 6,592,800 square miles of territory, it is 1.7 times larger than the second largest country, Canada, and its 3,855,100 sq miles of land. Russia has close ties in the western hemisphere with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Columbia. According to RIA Novosti, a leading Russian news outlet, “Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia is looking to build military bases in Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries.” So my follow-up question to Mr. Obama would have been, “And what region is that, exactly Mr. President?” The answer to that question would certainly be interesting wouldn’t you agree?

Putin Saves Obama's Political Bacon Over Syria

I don't know if President Obama has one or not but if he doesn't, I nominate Vladimir Putin for Obama's BFF after Vlad saved his political bacon this week over Syria. To say that Obama mismanaged the situation with Syria is a mistake because it suggests he tried to manage the situation with Syria. He did not. What happened was a series of missteps that has become the trademark of the Obama Administration - this inept team of amateurs. Fortunately for them and everyone else, it is often better to be lucky than to be good. Here is what I mean.

What started the sequence of events that had the Administration careening toward what appeared to be yet another blunder was President Obama's statement back in 2012 that if Syrian President Assad used chemical weapons that would be crossing a "red line." The off-handed and off-teleprompter remark placed the United States in the position of having to either take action against Syria or losing credibility when on August 21st of this year, someone (allegedly the Assad regime) fired rockets armed with chemical warheads into eleven neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs killing 1500 civilians - 400 of which were children. Over the next several days, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry tried to make the case for attacking Syria to let Assad know there are consequences to violating international law regarding the use of gas. Initially, Mr. Obama claimed he didn’t need the approval of Congress in order to strike Syria but as his efforts to build the support of the international community failed, he pivoted and said he would ask for Congressional approval. As the Administration tried to convince lawmakers and the American public that attacking Syria was in our national interest, the president began to receive criticism for “drawing the red line.” True to form, Mr. Obama denied drawing the red line and tried to blame everyone else - the world and Congress - despite the video of him clearly using the words “red line.” It was soon very apparent that this effort was also doomed to failure.

While answering the question, ‘Is there anything that Syria can do to avoid being attacked?’ during a CNN interview, Sec. Kerry made his own off-handed remark. Kerry flippantly replied, ‘Well of course they could give up all their chemical weapons within the week but that’s not going to happen.’ Kerry made this remark never dreaming anyone would take it seriously. However, when Russia and Syria indicated that they might be willing to discuss this proposal, he soon began backtracking and even the liberal press recognized this to be a major screw-up. With an address to the nation scheduled to take place within two days, things were looking pretty bleak for Team Barry. Suddenly it must have occurred to Obama and Company, that they had just been thrown a “life line.” What had initially been universally seen as a blunder was now being hailed by Kerry, Obama, and liberals everywhere as a great secret plan that had been weeks in the making. You know what they say, ‘Success has many parents; failure is an orphan.’ In his Tuesday night address, the president said he would delay asking for Congressional approval to strike Syria and that he would allow time to see if diplomacy might still lead to a peaceful solution. The president did however say that a military strike was not off the table if the weapons turnover proposal failed. President Obama was ‘off the hook.’

Since his speech, Mr. Obama and his administration have been patting themselves on the back for getting Russia to take the lead on Syria. Barack Obama has slipped comfortably back into his preferred leading from behind mode. In his new role as world leader, Mr. Putin wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times that chastised President Obama for his handling of the crisis in Syria and warned him not to take military action. Not fully recovered from having so narrowly dodged a bullet, Obama and the gang that can’t shoot straight hasn’t had time to realized that they should be humiliated.

There is a saying, “There are three kinds of people in the world: Those that make things happen; those that watch things happen and those who say, ‘What just happened?’ I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself which one is Obama; which one is Putin and which one is Kerry.

Pelosi and the Advice of Five Year Olds

Is it any wonder our country and so many of our children are such a mess? Consider the following. Apparently Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s five year old grandson took valuable time away from his daily perusal of the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, and the Washington Post (liberal rags all) to see his grandmother off on her return trip to DC and chat about geo-politics. According to the Congresswoman, the following conversation took place: REP. NANCY PELOSI: …My five-year-old grandson, as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday, he said to me, Mimi, my name, Mimi, war with Syria, are you yes war with Syria, no, war with Syria. And he's five years old. We're not talking about war; we're talking about action. Yes war with Syria, no with war in Syria. I said, 'Well, what do you think?' He said, 'I think no war.' I said, 'Well, I generally agree with that but you know, they have killed hundreds of children, they've killed hundreds of children there. ' And he said, five years old, 'Were these children in the United States?' And I said, 'No, but they're children wherever they are.' (www.realclearpolitics.com, 3 Sep 13). Pelosi then went on to ramble something about our interests which was completely incoherent. Ironically, it seems to me that the five year old gets it whereas grandma doesn’t. More importantly though is, “What kind of adult engages in a conversation like this with a child?” The answer is a liberal Democrat of course! Whatever happened to talking to little boys about their pets, dinosaurs, turtles; Batman, Spiderman and Superman, cars and trucks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.? Lord willing, a five year old boy in America can currently expect to live to be 79. So that means he has 71 years of being an adult. Can’t liberals allow a kid even 5 years to be, well, a kid, before they begin the, ‘It Takes a Village’, socialist, global consciousness, multiculturalism, ‘make a difference’, blah, blah, blah, clap trap indoctrination? After all, you have them as a captive audience from K-12 in our public school system. Isn’t that enough? Maybe next time, Ms. Pelosi might try saying something to her little grandson like, “Sweetie you don’t need to worry about that. We grownups in Washington are going to take care of that. Listen to your Mommy and Daddy and be a good boy while I’m gone. Love you!” Perhaps with regard to the “We grownups in Washington..” she might be a little reluctant to say that for fear of lying.

Syria: Heads the Bad Guys Win; Tails America Loses

30 months and 100,000 deaths into the civil war, there are no good choices for the US regarding Syria. Instead of supporting the original, pro-American, moderate opposition in the beginning, the United States stayed on the sidelines while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted 'Bashar al-Assad is a reformer.' This from the woman President Obama called, "... one of the finest secretary of states we've had."[sic] (I guess proper English wasn't stressed at Punahou, Occidental College, Columbia University or Harvard Law School!) But I digress. While the Obama Administration hung on to the notion that Assad was a reformer, Assad went about destroying the moderate opposition which was soon replaced by a collection of radical, al Qaeda affiliated, extremists. To make matters worse, President Obama, in order to appear tough during his re-election campaign, painted the US into a corner with his "red line" regarding the use of chemical weapons. Now we are faced with having to choose between the brutal dictator, Assad, and the America-hating Islamists but choose we must. Further complicating our decision is the fact that it isn't completely clear exactly who used the gas against the mostly civilian victims. Most likely it was Assad but there is also the possibility that it was the extremists. Assad clearly had the greater capability to use chemical weapons but he also had the least to gain. He is winning his fight against the opposition without using chemical weapons and using them would only draw the ire of America. On the other hand, the rebels are far less capable of deploying chemical weapons but the Islamists have demonstrated a willingness to kill civilians if it leads to their ultimate goals. If Assad gets the blame and the US attacks his military capability, it just might turn the tide of the war in favor of the extremists. All this has the makings of a "good Democrat" war - one in which the US has very little national interest, has little to gain, has little support from our allies and is opposed by the United Nations. Unlike the case for war against Iraq (ADMITTEDLY IT PROVED TO BE A BAD DECISION) which had the support of a coalition of over 40 countries, 17 UN resolutions condemning Saddam Hussein and his regime, the support of the UN, authorization from the Congress to use force, and the belief by nearly every world intelligence service that Iraq possessed WMDs, the case for attacking Syria is far weaker. While not insignificant, Assad allegedly killed about 1500 people with chemical weapons as opposed to the thousands of Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War and thousands of his own citizens during the Kurdish uprisings known to have been killed by Saddam using chemical weapons. Further, unlike the build-up to the Iraq War, Obama has managed to assemble a coalition of only 5 countries - France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. These are good allies but certainly not without their own motivation which is probably vastly different from ours. As a result of his failed effort to gain wide international support, the US was embarrassed when British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was denied authority to use force against Syria by the British House of Commons after pledging to help. Humiliation loves company! Lastly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that any military strikes against Syria would be illegal unless in self-defense under the UN charter or if approved by the UN Security Council. Since Syria is unlikely to attack the US directly and Security Council members, Russia and China, are opposed to any military action against Syria, these criteria will not likely be met. Congress may ultimately approve the president's use of force but only because the country has been put into a position where unless we act, its credibility will be damaged by yet another inept Obama Administration foreign policy blunder. So this is where things currently stand: Heads the Bad Guys Win; Tails America Loses!