I love how events of the past few weeks have empowered the Obama policy team to proclaim to their mainstream media friends that Obama had his “Best Week Ever.” Sadly, our friends in Congress seem to be reading the White House press releases as well. As Congress engages for a few short weeks before the August “District Work Period,” it well behooves the Members and Senators to look beyond the ongoing media frenzy of last month’s Supreme Court rulings. Shift the discussion as they should point out to the President and his staff that the White House is idly standing by while the world goes into the toilet.
There are a lot of problems getting worse every day. These problems are the Obama team’s fault and no appeasement of Iran will change that.
ISIS/ISIL/Al Qaeda - In the midst of "The Best Week Ever,” the White House downplayed - even largely ignored - a day of coordinated terrorist attacks hitting multiple targets on multiple continents. An American-owned chemical production facility was among the targets. It was nearly blown up except for the last second interception by the French (Yes, the French) police. The terrorist organizations attempted to literally light fires across globe - and the White House kept on partying. It doesn’t matter which organization actually pulled off the attacks, ISIS claimed it. And somehow that isn’t important to the White House.
Iraq - Whoever won, lost or fumbled the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is now impossible to not say that Obama and his limousine liberals have officially lost the peace. Obama’s advisors have finally realized that their precipitous withdrawal has left a near-collapsed state. The President recently announced his is sending personnel back into Iraq. But they are just "advisors" and training personnel. The ghost of Kennedy's entrance into Vietnam must be haunting the halls of 1600 Penn. Perhaps the best week for the White House was the astounding fact that none of the sign carrying union-paid progressive protestors are screaming at the WH fence over this reentry into Iraq and war.
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Or is it that perhaps Obama's advisors never learned the worn Vietnam era adage, "A military advisor bleeds the same color as combatant." I know my friends in the armed forces already know that well.
The hacking of OPM - For those of you who live outside of the Beltway, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the HR department of the Federal Government. Sadly, the fact that the OPM gave a IT subcontract to directly a Chinese company makes the hacking incident almost laughable. In simple terms, what the Obama Administration’s mishandling of nearly 25 million personnel records means is that the Chinese military no longer needs to "hack" the US networks. With detailed personal and financial records of nearly every federal employee, cross referenced with the details of every security clearance granted by OPM in the past 15 years, the Chinese had no need to hack anything. The OPM records will tell the Chinese military exactly which US citizens had or have clearance and what level the personnel have. The records gave the Chinese every bit of information that helps a program uncover a user's password. The OPM records even let the Chinese know who the US is paying to conduct surveillance in China and around the globe.
Obama's "best week ever" has shown that the US has NO secrets that the Chinese don't already have. This is not a one-time event. This will continue to be a huge vulnerability to US personnel within the clandestine service. And the Obama Administration only reluctantly allowed the head of OPM to resign this week.
Greece and the European economy - Is this the beginning of another European economic slide? It is uncertain. The markets have known - as have most casual observers - that the default would happen. The real test is not until next week July 20th when Greece is due to pay the European Central Bank (ECB) 3.5 billion Euros.
For a man who claims to wants the United States to be better perceived by the international community, Obama celebrating his "best week ever" while the cradle of Western civilization crumbles brings to mind images of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
President Obama has shown a complete lack of leadership with yet another economic crisis. With Greece slowly pulling the European Union into a new economic crisis, shouldn't our President at least be concerned how this will negatively affect the US' largest trading partner? More than half a month ago, Greece became to first developed nation to ever default on a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Considering that the United States is the single largest donor nation to the IMF - doesn't the president care? Isn't he at least concerned about the massive amount of US taxpayers dollars being lost in the Greek economic meltdown? Shouldn’t he be help to build a positive global economy? Isn’t that part of leadership?
Puerto Rico - Whether or not the White House understands it or not, Puerto Rico is a part of the United States. To be honest, perhaps all Valerie Jarrett knows about the island is as an airport stop on the way to Congressman Charlie Rangel's Dominican hideaway. But as the Puerto Rican economy continues to crumble, the economy of the southeast US, if not the entire country, could easily be pulled down. The Puerto Rican government cannot pay its debts. With a population of 3.7 million, it has more US citizens than 20 of our States. There are host of issues - strictly public policy issues - should address. Considering all of the authoritarian actions this President has chosen to exercise, its strange he has not bothered to even address these obvious problems facing Puerto Rico.
Perhaps the president doesn't know about the Puerto Rican economic crisis yet, but his staff do. There have been advertisements all over Washington, DC and covering entire metro subway stations.... for months.
There are a host of other issues facing our country - and the world. Each of them is serious and requires a considered approach and a White House able and ready to weave them into a consistent policy. While the Obama team is still too busy re-reading the headlines, I hope Congress can use the remainder of July to force Valerie Jarrett and her coterie to realize they need to get to work.
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