Tag Archives: Golf

Barack Obama to reporters on ISIS: “we don’t have a strategy yet”

The leftist Washington Post reports on the story.

Excerpt:

President Obama said Thursday he has not decided on stepped-up military action against the Islamic State in Iraq or Syria, cautioning that he remains committed to a strategy that protects U.S. interests and builds broader partnerships to combat the threat posed by the militant group.

“We don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said during a White House news conference, referring to increased military action. “Folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at. …The suggestions seems to have been we’re about to go full-scale on some elaborate strategy for defeating ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] and the suggestion has been we’ll start moving forward imminently and somehow with Congress still out of town, they’ll be left in the dark. That’s not going to happen.”

And in other news, Russia has invaded more of Ukraine, and Obama responded.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama refused to label Russia’s military action inside eastern Ukraine as an ‘invasion’ on Thursday, calling it an ‘incursion’ despite facing a reporter’s specific action about his choice of words.

Following a conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama told reporters that the two leaders agree ‘that Russia is responsible for the violence in eastern Ukraine. … Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.’

‘And the new images of Russian forces inside Ukraine make that plain for the world to see.’

He insisted that the Russian tanks filmed rumbling through Ukraine on Thursday are merely ‘a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now.’

[…]Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republicans’ top dog on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reacted angrily before Obama’s brief press conference.

‘Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine can only be called one thing: a cross-border military invasion,’ he said. ‘To claim it is anything other than that is to inhabit President Putin’s Orwellian universe.’

‘A sovereign nation in the heart of Europe is being invaded by its larger neighbor,’ McCain declared. ‘This runs completely contrary to the civilized world that America and our partners have sought to build since World War II.’

Obama’s careful parsing was in keeping with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki’s lukewarm refusal hours earlier, during an interview on MSNBC, to discuss varying ‘terminology’ related to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military moves.

Oh, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. It’s not an invasion, Obama says it’s not:

Baghdad Obama says: "There are no Russian tanks in Ukraine"
Baghdad Obama says: “There are no Russian tanks in Ukraine”

The nice thing about foreign policy is that when you screw it up, the consequences come quickly, so you know where the failure occurred. With the borrowing of the 7 trillion dollars, Obama’s managed to cloak his economic policy failures so far. But he can’t hide this foreign policy mess.

Iran set to steal military technology from the drone Obama gave them

Fars News reports. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt:

Senior Iranian officials announced here in Tehran on Monday that experts of the country’s Science and Defense Ministries are likely to launch joint cooperation to study and analyze the technology of the US drone that was downed by Iran early in December.

“We have had some meetings with the Defense Minister about the kind of cooperation that the academic community can have with our country’s Armed Forces on the US spy drone and once we come to the final conclusions we will be ready for cooperation,” Iranian Minister of Science, Research and Technology Kamran Daneshjou told FNA on Monday.

“The country’s universities have informed the Science Ministry that they are ready to study and analyze the US stealth drone and demanded the Science Ministry to inform the Defense Ministry of their preparedness in this regard,” he added.

Iran first announced on December 4 that its defense forces had downed the aircraft through a sophisticated cyber attack.

The drone is the first such loss by the US. US officials have described the loss of the aircraft in Iran as a setback and a fatal blow to the stealth drone program.

The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations’ air defenses undetected.

So what was Obama doing when he refused to act to destroy the drone? (See video above)

Obama doesn't have time for national security
Obama doesn't have time for national security

Obama golfs while Iranians neutralize our stealth drone program. George W. Bush golfed 24 times in 8 years. Obama has golfed 90 times in 3 years. I think he needs to do less golfing, and more national security decision making.

Obama will ask for $1.2 trillion dollar increase in the debt limit

Obama Economic Record November 2011
Obama Economic Record November 2011

From Reuters.

Excerpt:

The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling… according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.

[…]The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

And yet some people apparently think that he is doing a good job with the economy.

Perhaps this story provides a clue about why things have gone so badly:

After an hour of hiking, President Obama Monday got down to the serious business at hand, heading out to golf for the second day in his first three days of vacation. He was back on the course at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

With this one, Obama reaches a new milestone, having gone golfing 90 times in less than three years as president. That’s about three months of golf, given that the excursions generally take about five hours – much of the useful portion of the day.

What’s more, it’s the 32nd time he’s been on the links this year, a record for the president. His 32 outings eclipses the 2010 mark of 30 and is far ahead of his 2009 tally of 28 rounds as president.

And remember, there are still five days left in the year for Obama to pad his new record, which he almost certainly will.

Along for Monday’s round were three of Obama’s Hawaii friends, Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. The latter, you may remember, was arrested in April in a prostitution sting.

It’s the children who are going to be paying for Obama’s spending spree. Remember, the last Republican budget was in 2007 – and the deficit then was $160 billion. Then the Democrats took over the House and the Senate and the deficit rose dramatically and is not going down in the near future.