Romney: Say, Obama’s Foreign Policy Isn’t Working Out So Well, Eh?

By William Teach June 13, 2014 – 6:49 am

He hates to say “I told you so”, but, really, he told you so

(The Hill) Mitt Romney on Thursday blamed President Obama for the Sunni militants’ takeover of key cities in northern Iraq.

“His foreign policy is what has led to these foreign crises all over the world. Try to recapture the lead and keeping these things from happening is going to be a real challenge,” Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, said on Fox News’s “Your World with Cavuto” when asked about Iraq.

“This is the result of the president’s missteps over the last several years,” he added.

“Clearly, as the president said, you have to keep all options on the table. The sad thing is the limited options we have are the result of poor decisions made in the past. You’ve got to act at the right time, at the time the opportunity is presented,” he said.

In Syria, for instance, Romney noted that Obama drew a “red line” and said President Bashar Assad must go. Three years later, Romney said the administration is “doing nothing really to make that happen.”

Romney said Obama also failed to get a status of forces agreement in Iraq so a residual force of 10,000 to 15,000 could remain after the 2011 pullout.

“All of these decisions made in the past puts us in a very difficult position now, frankly with very poor options,” he said.

But, but, but, Obama’s (creepy) Truth Team said Obama was super-mega awesome!

How’s that working out?

(WSJ) With the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials.

Fortunately, the Obama admin is considering making time to consider the possibility of convening a meeting to think about sending more harshly worded tweets

Fortunately, Samantha Powers

State Department officials on Thursday refused to outline what steps the Obama administration would take if Iranian forces entered Iraq.

Team Obama has pretty much no idea what to do, and, quite frankly, it looks like they just can’t be bothered

https://twitter.com/brooks_rosa/statuses/477255213640728577

Rosa Brooks was counselor to then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy in the Dept of Defense from 2009-2011.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Warmist Uses Little Ice Age To Position Climate Change As Bad

By William Teach June 12, 2014 – 3:45 pm

I’ve read this bit of climainsanity 4 times, and it gets nuttier each time

(Daily Beast) In the 14th century, four centuries of mild weather came to an abrupt halt in Europe. Famine and frigid temperatures ensued, and roughly 10 percent of the population died.

“‘Natural’ disasters are most disastrous when humanity gives them a push,” William Rosen asserts, and his lucid exposition of the fatal interaction of ecological, agricultural, economic, and political factors that led to the Great Famine of 1315-1322 should give pause to anyone who thinks we have outgrown such shortsightedness.

Long before the bitter cold winters and drenching rains of the early 14th century announced the end of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Europe had expanded dangerously close to the limits of its resources. Four centuries of unusually mild temperatures (the highest in 8,000 years), prompted the continent’s farmers to plant crops on vast quantities of land previously unsuitable for agriculture; the increased food supply in turn fueled a population explosion that tripled the number of people in medieval Europe.

If you’re thinking “these nutballs aren’t going to Blame mankind for the LIA”, um, yeah, they try

To 21st-century skeptics who cite the initially beneficent effects of the MWP as proof that global warming is no big deal, Rosen responds by pointing out that the MWP was “a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon … there is still little evidence that worldwide temperatures were, on average, warmer than today.” Moreover, the growth fueled by the MWP proved to be unsustainable.

“More and more marginal land was producing a larger and larger percentage of [Europe’s] food,” the author notes. When those marginal lands ceased to produce due to frosts and floods, the millions of extra mouths to be fed remained. Rebellions and civil wars exacerbated the impact of an unprecedented quarter-century of terrible weather and deadly livestock diseases. Two consecutive harvest failures in 1314 and 1315 launched seven years of famine, resulting in the deaths of between 5 and 12 percent of the population of northern Europe.

Except, there’s plenty if evidence of the MWP being worldwide, but, really, I love the suggestion that the MWP was localized to the European area and all that great farming and human activities led to the LIA.

While vividly re-creating a bygone civilization, he invites us to look beyond our significant but ultimately superficial differences and recognize that we too live in fragile equilibrium with the natural world whose resources we recklessly exploit, and that like our medieval forebears we may well be vulnerable to “a sudden shift in the weather.”

Strange how shifts to cool cause so many problems for Mankind while things go well when warm, eh?

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If All You See…

By William Teach June 12, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a fish that surely died from the acidic ocean, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Theo Spark, with a post offering Boehner and McConnell terms of their surrender.

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Bummer: Climate Change May Prevent Contact With Alien Civilizations

By William Teach June 12, 2014 – 10:55 am

Is there anything that Hotcoldwetdry can’t mess up?

(Phys.org) Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, “Where are they?” Any civilisation advanced enough to undertake interstellar travel would, he argued, in a brief period of cosmic time, populate its entire galaxy. Yet, we haven’t made any contact with such life. This has become the famous “Fermi Paradox”. (snip)

So why don’t we see advanced civilisations swarming across the universe? One problem may be climate change. It is not that advanced civilisations always destroy themselves by over-heating their biospheres (although that is a possibility). Instead, because stars become brighter as they age, most planets with an initially life-friendly climate will become uninhabitably hot long before emerges. (snip)

However, the universe is immense and a few rare worlds will have had the necessary good fortune. It may just be that Earth is one of those lucky planets – a precious, fragile jewel in space. So, perhaps inevitably, will remain a bane of the continued existence of life on such planets.

via Anthony Watts.

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Liberal Media Are Very Concerned Over Cantor’s Primary Loss

By William Teach June 12, 2014 – 7:25 am

They are Very Concerned about the extremists taking over or something. Here’s the NY Times Editorial Board

The forces of political nihilism not only remain alive and well within the Republican Party, but they are on the rise. Witness the way they shook Washington on Tuesday by removing from power Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who had been one of the most implacable opponents to the reform of immigration, health care and taxation. His crime (in addition to complacent campaigning)? He was occasionally obliged, as a leader, to take a few minimalist steps toward governing, like raising the debt ceiling and ending a ruinous shutdown.

For that he was pilloried in his Virginia district by a little-known resident of the distant extremes, David Brat, whose most effective campaign tool was a photo showing Mr. Cantor standing next to President Obama. By falsely portraying the seven-term incumbent as just another compromiser, just another accommodationist to the power of big government, Mr. Brat managed the unimaginable feat of bringing down a majority leader in a primary, and by double digits.

And here’s Charles Blow

While the beltway chatter grows over the political death of Eric Cantor, the first House leader to be unseated in a primary, it would be easy to lose sight of just how unsettling his demise is for our politics in general.

On one level, it is a glaring example — and condemnation — of the staggering levels of voter apathy that exist the further an election race is from presidential politics. (WT note: that would be a good reason to repeal the 17th amendment, which would cause citizens to pay way more attention State politics and politics closer to home. That’s different post on its own)

Blow goes on to show that he is Very Concerned with redistricting, which he claims to be a cause, and goes on to whine about Democrats being under-represented. Hey, elections have consequences.

We already have a deadlocked political system in Washington where doing nothing is viewed by many small-government — and some anti-government — conservatives as a victory. Stacking the deck against politicians who deign to compromise with their Democratic counterparts in general, and this president in particular, does not bode well for us as a nation.

In reality, a Republican compromise is usually an overwhelming Democrat win, because of moderates like Cantor.

Cantor’s defeat on Tuesday may now be the subject of schadenfreude and chops licking, but it may also be a terrible omen.

Yeah, it would be a real shame if non-squishy Republicans took over to push their agenda of limited government, reduced spending, reduced federal government interference in, well, everything, increased economic freedom, increased domestic energy production, protecting our borders, increased personal freedom, limited government spying on citizens, and following the Constitution. I wonder where Blow’s concern regarding hardcore, extremist Progressives taking over the Democrat Party is?

Here’s E.J. Dionne, who calls this a “purge”

Republicans who simply want to keep tacking right to maintain their power should also note that if the tea party helped mobilize support for them in 2010, it now threatens to reduce the party to a right-wing sect. (snip)

Appeasing the tea party could create a vicious cycle: The more the party is defined by a hard core, the easier it will be for the most conservative voters to dominate it in primaries involving only the most ardent. (snip)

What the tea party giveth, the tea party taketh away. Its energy in 2010 was directed against President Obama and helped Cantor become House majority leader. Now its sights are set on purifying and purging the Republican Party. But purges, as Cantor has learned, are painful. They can also be dangerous to a party’s long-term well-being.

He’s right about one thing: what we giveth, we can taketh away. And when our Representatives, which we donated to, campaigned for, supported, and voted for fail to follow through on the Conservative agenda, we should vote them out. Another NY Times article notes, as many others have, that Cantor forgot his roots, and was ignoring his constituents in his district in favor of everything else. This isn’t a problem for just Cantor, but a good chunk of Republicans and Democrats. Elected officials too often forget why they were elected, and dismiss the concerns of their constituents, often in favor of national politics.

After carefully considering Cantor’s loss Tuesday, I’m not going to say that it was an “earthquake”, as many have noted. I’d bet that half who voted in the primary had no idea that he was the #2 in the GOP House. This isn’t a purge, this may or many not mean a populist revolution, there may or may not be national implications. What this did show is that Representatives should represent, not think they can say one thing to their constituents then do something else in Washington. That their constituents do not exist to simply re-elected said representative again and again. That Citizens matter. That the middle matters.

The middle? Yes, the middle. At the end of the day, fiscal conservatives/libertarians/Tea Party folks are in the middle of the political spectrum (I’m not including Social Conservatives, who are more towards the Classical Conservative spectrum). Political theory regarding the Democratic model has Socialism on the left, which features heavy control and ownership of the means of production as its primary focus. Classical Conservatism is on the right, which features no government involvement in the economy, along with heavy government involvement in social issues. Classical Liberalism is in the center, and lives by the phrase “the government that governs least governs best”. We believe that government should only get involved in the Moral (this relates to our private lives) and Economic cores when necessary. We are the Radical Middle. In terms of American politics and our Republic, we want more power returned back to the States, where it belongs. We are the Radical Middle, and are tired of the true extremists, both in the Democrat Party and the GOP establishment, taking the country off the cliff.

Anyhow, Cantor and the GOP establishment learned a valuable lesson: stop ignoring constituents.

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Criminal Investigation Opened For Phoenix VA

By William Teach June 12, 2014 – 6:45 am

It would have been nice to hear this from the Attorney General, announcing that he is Doing His Job. Alas, no

(Fox News) FBI Director James Comey confirmed Wednesday that the bureau’s Phoenix branch has opened a criminal investigation of the Veterans Affairs Department, amid mounting calls on Capitol Hill for the Justice Department to get more involved.

Comey confirmed the bureau’s involvement during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Officials previously made clear that federal prosecutors were helping in an inspector general investigation, but the probe by Phoenix FBI agents marks a new phase.

The additional probe comes as internal audits show the expanding scope of the scandal where thousands of military veterans endured long wait times for VA medical care, and VA officials apparently covered up those wait times in order to make their internal numbers look better.

Maybe they find criminal wrongdoing, maybe they don’t. Either way, there are so many problems with the Phoenix branch that outside agencies are needed to investigate the VA, and not just the Phoenix branch, but the entire Veterans Affairs Dept. The internal probe was certainly tough, finding a myriad of issues plaguing the VA. Yet, has anyone been found culpable and disciplined? Terminated? VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was finally forced to fall on his sword, but what of the people who were actually instituting the waiting lists?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Good News: Katharine Hayhoe Wants To Convince Christians Of Climate Change

By William Teach June 11, 2014 – 6:39 pm

This actually continues a long running Warmist meme about Skeptics being religious fundamentalists, which they call “fundies”, not meant to be complimentary, but, hey, Lefties are all sorts of tolerant, eh?

(NPR) Last week, the Obama administration announced historic regulations to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Policies to address climate change have been a tough sell among some Republicans on Capitol Hill, but also in many Christian congregations around the country.

Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is also a devout Christian.

Hayhoe has spent the last few years trying to convince other Christians that climate change is real, and that caring about the issue is one of the most Christian things you can do. She told NPR’s Rachel Martin of the difficulties of spreading that message among Christian congregations.

“The people we trust, the people we respect, the people whose values we share, in the conservative community, in the Christian community, those people are telling us, many of them, that this isn’t a real problem — that it’s a hoax,” Heyhoe says. “Even worse, that you can’t be a Christian and think that climate change is real. You can’t be a conservative and agree with the science.”

Heyhoe says what Christians often question about climate change is if God is in control, how could this happen? Another argument she hears is the idea that humans could change climate threatens the sovereignty of God.

“The answer to that is pretty simple: It’s free will,” she says. “God gave us the brains to make good choices and there’s consequences to the choices that we make.”

It’s not about trying to convince people, in this case Christians, that the climate changes, it’s about convincing Christians (and, really most people), that it is mostly/solely caused by Mankind.

Sadly, what she is also doing is positioning “climate change” as an environmental issue. Christians care heavily about the environment, but “climate change” is not an environmental issue.

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Americans Support Increased Energy Prices To Fight Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach June 11, 2014 – 2:12 pm

Here’s one for the Warmists

(Bloomberg) Americans are willing to bear the costs of combating climate change, and most are more likely to support a candidate seeking to address the issue.

By an almost two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 33 percent, Americans say they would pay more for energy if it would mean a reduction in pollution from carbon emissions, according to the Bloomberg National Poll.

While Republicans were split, with 46 percent willing to pay more and 49 percent opposed to it, 82 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents say they’d accept higher bills.

Australians were also willing to pay more to combat “climate change”. That is, until the laws were actually passed and the rising prices and personal restrictions became reality, then they threw the ruling Labor party out on their ears.

A majority of Americans see climate change as a threat, with 46 percent classifying it as a “major” threat and 27 percent as a “minor threat.” Half would like the federal government to adopt policies to combat it in the next decade.

What’s not mentioned in the article is that only 5% see “climate change” as a the most important issue facing the nation, per the poll results.

The public also is split on the scientific underpinnings of climate change. Forty-eight percent say they “trust” warnings from scientists about the problem, while 43 percent say scientists “manipulate their findings for political reasons.”

That’s pretty damning that it’s almost an even split on trust/distrust of climate scientists.

What’s not included are the study samples. Regardless, when it’s not just Other People paying the price for “climate change” policies, but the people who say they are willing to pay more getting hit, their opinions will change in a snap. We already see that most Warmists are not willing to pay the price now.

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If All You See…

By William Teach June 11, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a beach that will be swamped by sea rise because Someone Else refused to increase the AC temp, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on a Good Guy with a gun stopping a Bad Guy.

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Obama Suggests Banning All Automatic And Semi-automatic Weapons

By William Teach June 11, 2014 – 8:40 am

Strangely, he doesn’t suggest that the huge number of people who protect him who carry automatic and sem-automatic weapons should be disarmed

(Daily Caller) President Barack Obama Tuesday suggested that the U.S. government should follow Australia’s example in dealing with shooting sprees, which involved strict gun bans on semiautomatic and automatic weapons.

“Australia had a mass shooting [in 1996] similar to Columbine and Newtown, and just said, ‘That’s it, we’re not seeing that again,’ and basically imposed very severe tough gun laws and they haven’t had a mass shooting since,” Obama said, after he was asked for his reaction to recent shooting episodes in California and Oregon. Those laws included the confiscation of nearly all handguns and rifles.

“We can have respect for the Second Amendment and responsible hunters and sportsmen can have possess weapons,” Obama told an audience of students during a broadcast on the Tumblr website.

But the country needs “commonsense rules in place that make a dent in what’s happening,” he said, after an emotional appeal to the students and young people who were watching the Tumblr broadcast, which was advertised as a question-and-answer session about student debt.

The Second Amendment was never meant for hunters and sportsman, but for Citizens to protect the nation from those who would attack it, and to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, a government that disregards the law, our Constitution, and our Rights. One that harms its citizens.

“My greatest frustration so far is that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people you know who can do just unbelievable damage,” he said.

And where is gun violence the greatest? In those liberal run areas which instituted draconian gun regulations. I do enjoy how he’s “frustrated” that people just won’t listen to him. He always seems to be disappointed and/or frustrated that citizens aren’t interested in so many of his hardcore Progressive, fascist policies.

“We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens. … Our level of gun violence is off the charts. There’s no advanced developing country on Earth that would put up with this,” he said.

Says the guy surrounded by federal agents who carry weapons that are banned for private citizens. And, of course, he has to demonize the NRA

(SMH) “Most members of Congress — and I have to say to some degree this is bipartisan — are terrified of the NRA. The combination of, you know, the NRA and gun manufacturers are very well financed and have the capacity to move votes in local elections and congressional elections. And so if you’re running for office right now, that’s where you feel the heat,” he said.

The Australian also notes this, which wasn’t included in the other articles

“The country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me,” Mr Obama said.

Again, says the guy surrounded by agents armed with automatic weapons not allowed for private citizens, and who will have government supplied armed protection for 10 years once he leaves office. We’ve done some soul searching, and feel that his policies are Bad. Charles C.W. Cooke notes

In other words, the president of the United States just praised a government for forcefully removing all semi-automatic firearms (i.e. a remarkable number of the guns in America and the majority of those sold today) from its citizenry.

Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. When the Left says that we should respond to shootings as Australia did, they don’t mean that we should institute background checks on private sales; they mean that they we should ban and confiscate guns. No amount of wooly words can change this. Again, one doesn’t bring up countries that have confiscated firearms as a shining example unless one wishes to push the conversation toward confiscation.

Liberals like Obama very much support confiscation of most guns from the citizens. Of course, none of them think restrictive and confiscatory laws should apply to themselves. Just Other People.

* Photo from MrConservative.

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