MADDOG10's Blog

Poor old Barack – accused by so many last week as having been played by  Russia and Syria as he was attempting his level best to be a tough president, in  charge of not only the country but with his eye on the world.

He spoke, threw down the gauntlet with his “red-line” threat and expected  everyone to hop to.

Unfortunately, no one over there was scared, least of all the people who were  to be the target of his threats.

Wait – wait. I take that back.

Some people everywhere were scared, and a good number of them were Americans  who saw Obama’s threat against Syria as being a wide-open invitation to a real  war.

You know what they were thinking – military in the air and on the ground,  people shooting and getting shot and dying from that and from the bombs dropping  from the sky. Comparisons to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were rampant.

In the midst of all that was (and is) the threat of more of that poison gas  Syria finally admitted it has and the possibility of a nuke dropped into the mix  somewhere.

All in all, it was an ugly scenario, and for what?

Americans wanted to know, and when Barack Obama took to the TV cameras last  week, they expected the president of their country to present a masterful and  strong picture of what was going on and what would happen.

In other words, they wanted a leader.

I hope they weren’t holding their breath because, oh me, he did it again.  Fifteen minutes or so of scripted blather, devised to capture emotion about dead  children, framed with repeated personal pronouns – me, me, I, me, me – but which  essentially said – nothing.

When Obama was done, we knew no more about the crisis than before he opened  his mouth.

He had threatened an attack. He had sworn no boots on the ground. He had said  it would be short and would accomplish the goal.

Which was?

Frighten Syria so it would never use poison gas again?

Destroy Syria’s chemical stockpile?

Enable the “rebels” to succeed in toppling Assad’s government?

Who knows?

We didn’t learn anything about goals from the speech, and we certainly didn’t  learn any more from hapless Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in so far over  his head that it would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

And it is serious, because, like it or not, the Middle East is a tinderbox  just waiting for the right spark to set it all off.

Iraq teeters on the edge of a breakdown of any semblance of order.

Egypt and Libya, all because of the masterful decisions of Barack Obama and  Hillary Clinton, are in their own form of chaos.

Iran is on the verge of its nuclear weapons, if it hasn’t already got them  stockpiled.

Syria is in the midst of a civil war, which would leave al-Qaida in charge if  Assad were toppled.

Through it all, the Muslim Brotherhood is cheering its victories at our  expense – think Benghazi and Egypt – and despite that, it appears the U.S.  president wants to assist the rebels in Syria to topple that government.

Does he really think that helping al-Qaida to victory will result is any  semblance of regional stability?

Does he really think?

Through it all, Israel, which would be the next target along with Jordan if  the rebels succeed, has remained relatively silent.

I have no doubt they’re ready with decent defense plans; I would expect no  less of them. Their very survival is on the line, and while Obama mouths words  of support, there aren’t many who would put money on it.

The most surreal aspect of all this is that after the immediate verbal  fall-out from the speech and Kerry’s verbal gaffes, we end up with Russia’s  Vladimir Putin being the ostensible hero.

He’s now running things – calling the shots and working with Syria to make  the U.S. follow their lead.

He even wrote a scathing op-ed criticism of the United States that was  published in the New York Times.

No reaction from our lap-dog administration, but Sen. John McCain says he’s  going to write his own version for Pravda!

You go, John. That’ll show them.

What’s the matter with the people running this country that something like  this can happen right under their noses and they allow it – and it doesn’t seem  to bother or embarrass them in the least?!

No wonder the world laughs at us – U.S. – all because of the man in the Oval  Office, a political incompetent surrounded by an administration filled with  similarly unskilled political hacks.

It remains to be seen how all this plays out but it’s still a volatile  situation that could, as many have projected, turn out to be a World War III of  unimaginable magnitude.

As for how history will describe Obama when it tells his story, I have a  summary, from Macbeth:

“… It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying  nothing.”

What a difference a week makes. In a scathing critique of the president’s handling of the crisis in Syria, Judge Jeanine Pirro scolded President Obama on the values of leadership.

“Leaders are not born, they evolve,” Pirro said on her FoxNews show Friday. “They earn respect because of their character, integrity and credibility. Leaders are direct, clear and concise.”

Pirro cited Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as examples of real leaders.

“Leaders don’t dither, vacillate, get boxed into corners or play games,” she said. “They make the hard decisions. They don’t pass them off on others. They understand the buck stops with them.”

Pirro said every time Obama opens his mouth he gets into trouble – even by contradicting Secretary of State John Kerry on the type and effects of a military strike on Syria.

“But enter big, bad Vlad doing the Putin pivot,” Pirro said referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Russian president throws a lifeline to both Syria’s Assad and to the president of the United States.”

Pirro said that the United States should have been able to solve this crisis on its own, adding that she doubted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ever feared an attack orchestrated by Obama.

“Mr. President, admit it: You’ve been played, been caught flat-footed by a devil that doesn’t wear Prada,” she said.

Watch Pirro’s opening statement on Fox News:

Photo credit: Merrimack Police

A man wearing a President Barack Obama mask, a suit coat, tie and jeans, was recorded Wednesday morning on surveillance video robbing a Bank of America in Merrimack, N.H..

Officers responded after the man demanded money from a teller, then fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to the Merrimack Patch.

Witnesses helped determined the direction the man traveled and police arrested John Griffin, 52, of Newport, N.H., the Patch reported. While he never pulled a gun during the robbery, he was apprehended with a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition in his possession.

Griffin was charged with robbery and is being held on $75,000 bond pending a Sept. 20 court appearance.

No word yet on whether liberals will charge Griffin with racism for mocking the president.

Boehner just keeps repeating his goal – tying an increase in the debt limit  to cuts in spending.

In other words, he has announced plans to keep doing the same thing over  again expecting different results.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew held a press conference two weeks ago  in which he laid out the very specific and clear demands of the administration:  There will be no negotiations with Congress over the debt limit issue. Obama,  too, evidently plans to keep doing the same thing over again, understandably  expecting the same results he has achieved before – capitulations by Republicans  to hand over to Obama all the borrowed money he needs to implement Obamacare and  other wasteful, counterproductive and unconstitutional spending programs.

So what can Republicans who control the House do to get themselves engaged to  end Obamacare, as they claim to want, and radically reduce spending?

First, I  would refer you to my previous commentary on this issue titled “Not defunding is  defending.” It is an important premise to understand before moving  on to a Republican strategy and slogan for winning the debate.

Second, it’s clear that Obama thinks he has the upper hand because he is a  better poker player than Boehner. It makes sense to bluff when it has worked  over and over and over again. Now it’s time for House Republicans to offer up  their own non-negotiable demand.

Notice what Lew, speaking for the Obama administration said. The debt limit  must be unconditionally raised for the following reasons:

• to protect America from defaulting on its debt, a development that would  hurt the economy;
• to ensure Social Security benefits are uninterrupted;
• to ensure that veterans benefits and support for the U.S. military  continue;
• all negotiations about entitlement reform and taxes are to take place in  formulating a budget rather than in the context of a debate over the debt  limit.

There’s a simple way for Boehner to trump Obama on the debt limit that will  force him to negotiate – if that’s the speaker’s real goal.

All he needs to do is to approve a continuing resolution to fund all payments  on the debt, to pay Social Security benefits, to pay veterans benefits and to  fund the military. That would effectively kill Obama’s implicit threats to cut  spending on programs that have popular support.

Boehner needs to do this tomorrow – or Republicans will once again lose the  battle to cut spending in a meaningful way, including defunding Obamacare.

At that point, Obama would at least have to invent new rationalizations to  prevent a government shutdown. And Boehner would be in the driver’s seat knowing  that he has removed the political hammer from Obama’s hands.

Will House Republicans do it?

Not without pressure from you.

And there is an easy and inexpensive way for you to get through to Boehner,  who is facing a mutiny from his own caucus.

It’s called the “No More Red Ink”  campaign.

It allows you to utilize an effective, high-tech, grass-roots lobbying tool  to save your country from going off the fiscal cliff – which will happen only if  the borrowing-and-spending merry-go-round is finally stopped.

Going to war should not be a game of posturing and political charades, but  rather a quantified presidential decision based on our national and strategic  interests or to defend the nation.

Barack Obama’s ever-shifting policy on lobbing a few rockets or dropping a  few “little” bombs on Syria is a political debacle – an international  embarrassment engineered by a guy who knows as much about international  maneuvering as I do about quantum physics. Actually, less.

It is not the credibility of Congress, the international community or Mr.  Bush that is on the line, but Mr. Obama’s presidential integrity. He was the one  who mentioned a “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons by the Assad  punk, or maybe his Muslim Brotherhood buddies.

Recognizing that he jumped the red line Syrian shark, Obama is once again  looking for a way to slip out of his self-imposed political noose. This time,  however, the noose is much tighter, and Secretary of State Kerry is tightening  it each time he opens his pro-bombing mouth.

Experience more of  Ted Nugent’s no-holds-barred passion and patriotism in his books and WND’s “Ted  Nugent for President!” bumper sticker

The only people in America who want to bomb Syria are the traditionally  anti-war Democrats who now support an attack to protect their Democratic  president. There are also a couple of Fedzilla-genuflecting RINOs who support  bombing Syria.

If he bombs Syria, the president risks escalating military confrontation in  the Middle East, which would likely cause gas prices in the United States to  double and further cripple our increasingly artificial economy. If he doesn’t  bomb Syria, he looks like a tin-horn paper tiger, a community organizer so to  speak. The president has painted himself into a corner.

The nation watching this charade most closely has got to be Iran, which is  still building a nuclear weapon – which, by the way, was another “red line” of  our president.

Iran has to figure that if our president doesn’t bomb Syria, the United  States probably won’t bomb them, either. That job would be tossed over the fence  to Israel, which is just what Iran wants.

What the president is doing is hoping the Syrian bombing debacle fades into  the sunset so that he doesn’t have to make a decision. He’s hoping the whole  thing will fall off the front pages and that the next three years pass by as  quickly as possible so that he can hop on the $200,000-a-speech circuit.

Instead of bombing Syria, the president should be reminded that our dismal  economy is what matters most to Americans. Regretfully, our president knows even  less about how the engine of our economy operates than he does about maneuvering  in the Middle East.

Fasten your seat belts, America. The next three years are going to be a  mighty bumpy ride.

In a scathing “opening statement” Saturday night, Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro laid out the case against President Obama’s “dithering” on Syria – and it was <snip>ing.

“Really, Mr. President?” Pirro asked rhetorically, before launching into a description of the building of Russian and U.S forces in the eastern Mediterranean and Iranian “fast boat” action in the Persian Gulf that poses a danger of conflict far wider than the “quick military slap” Obama’s talking about.

“It’s teed up,” Pirro said.

She also noted brutality of the Syrian civil war over the past two years that has killed more than 100,000. The gas attack – widely ascribed to Syrian government forces – killed about 1,400, Pirro said.

“Why is killing one way more heinous and worthy of our response than another?” she asked.

Pirro also called out Obama’s ludicrous statement last week in Stockholm that he had not drawn a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian war, and showed a clip of the president doing exactly that during a news conference last year.

“A lie is a lie is a lie,” Pirro said, noting the whole world had heard the president say something he now denies. And that fecklessness can have tragic consequences.

“Your red lines are nothing more than green lights,” she said.

And more than once, she brought the conversation into the context of the shameful attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans – including Ambassador Chris Stephens – were killed in a terrorist attack that the administration refused to even acknowledge for weeks afterward.

“You lost credibility when you left American in Benghazi, then fired up Air Force One to go to your fundraiser in Las Vegas,” Pirro said, in a brutal, unsparing takedown of the series of lies, misstatements and obfuscations Obama and his minions have engaged in over the past year.

“It’s amateur hour in Washington,” Pirro said.

It might be amateur hour in Washington, but Pirro’s 10-minute indictment of the Obama administration is one that bears repeating, in Washington and throughout the country.

“Didn’t you win the Nobel Peace Prize?” Pirro concluded, in her rhetorical interrogation of the president.

“Yeah, you were the one …. Give it back!”