Obama's foreign policy . . . of denial and misdirection

So, our President's foreign policy (is there one?) gets slapped around like a trollup in Kiev, and in addition to anemic "sanctions" and brave words, his response to Russia's expansion into Ukraine is to dismiss them as a weak "regional" power? 

A regional power still with enough nukes to turn America into a glass desert, and one devoting more and more of its resources to modernizing and building its military; a regional power that is actively thwarting peace efforts in the Middle East.

No wonder, then, that as I watched this president, for whom I once voted, give Putin the raspberry in his news conference Wednesday, I thought of the crazy Emperor Caligula.

He took an army to the English Channel to invade Britain, only to declare victory and telling the troops to collect sea shells as their spoils of war.

I would have a lot more respect if The President just said, "Hey, our military is exhausted by war, and public won't support any new adventures, and frankly, we just don't much care about Ukraine."

Obama's 'most transparent' administration looking a lot like Big Brother

Forget Obamacare.

Well-intentioned, but flawed, likely fatally, in its execution, only the future will tell what becomes of the dream of universal health care in the United States.


It wasn't Obamacare that won my vote for our first African-American president in 2008.

Like millions of Americans, 
I bought the "Change" message, especially his promise to give us "the most transparent" presidency and White House in history.

Regardless whether you seen NSA secrets-leaker Edward Snowden as a heroic whistleblower or a traitor (and there are points for both views), his revelations about the mindboggling scope and privacy-raping practices of the NSA's worldwide cellphone, email and Internet monitoring have put the lie to the President's promise.

And they are only the tip of the iceberg. The Obama Administration may prove to be not only NOT the "most transparent," but one of the most secretive and oppressive of the electorate's right to know what it's elected leaders and their bureaucrats are up to.

The Society of Professional Journalists' periodical, Quill -- hardly a conservative rag by any definition -- explores the soul-sickening extent of the Obama Administration's politics of opacity. One nugget: This White House has used the 1917 Espionage Act seven times, more than any other administration, to gag or intimidate would-be government whistleblowers.

Read it for yourself and then ask: Does Big Brother look a lot like a president who promised he and his would do nothing in the dark?

Here's the link to the article "There Goes the Sun." 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

So, the election is over.
Thank God. And I mean that, in every conceivable sense of the word.
Think about it. A liberal, Democrat in the White House with a failed first term in so many respects -- and much of that failure due to a Republican House and a Senate where "blue dog" Democrats often defected to negate their party's narrow majority.
But also, much of that failure was due to the inexperience and lack of leadership from a man, however eloquent, whose previous national governmental service consisted of one, incomplete Senate term.
That he would win a second term, after four years of economic recession and high unemployment, indeed seems the essence of an "Audacity of Hope," as one of his books was titled.
Few gave Barack Obama a chance for re-election. If only the Republicans could come up with someone passably acceptable . . .
Instead, the GOP primaries proved to be a parade of clowns. Much of that nomination campaign consisted of a shifting anyone-but-Romney string of failed alliances. We had a cowboy clown from Texas who shot himself in his political foot, repeatedly, with his lack of understanding and fatal malaise. A fast food king who sounded good, but faded under scrutiny or anything deep in inquiry, a bigoted idiotessa who made Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar.
And, that Mormon guy who ran the 2002 Winter Games.
Try as he might -- and he certainly did, flip-flopping on social, cultural and economic issues in a naked, ultimately failed bid to win the Right -- Mitt Romney just never quite convinced Republicans, some of whom just months ago were lamenting the triggering of the Apocalypse should a Mormon win the White House.
I became a bored observer myself, once moderate Jon Huntsman -- also a Mormon, by the way -- failed to excite support with his thoughtful, common sense approach to the issues. His half-hearted endorsement of Mitt later on mirrored the lack of enthusiasm Romney would gather.
And so, here we are. And the heck of it is that probably little will change in the next four years.
If, considering the Dems held BOTH House and Senate, along with the White House for the first two years of Obama's first term and still did nothing beyond a watered-down health care program thanks to the self-serving antics of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi . . . then how can we expect anything better with Washington doomed to partisan bickering for another two years at least?
Faith, my friends, should not be placed in the soaring oratory of our likeable, but ineffective President, nor any politician or party.
Faith is the realm of God. And we had better be praying for our nation, now more than ever.