Maureen Dowd, "Obama’s Last Tango": Obama Tangoed While Brussels Burned

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Maureen Dowd and foreign affairs? They don't mix. I will never forget her sympathetic depictions of Saudi Arabia over the course of a 10-day visit to the Desert Kingdom, notwithstanding its abominations against women.

Telling us in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Obama’s Last Tango" that she accompanied Obama on his trip to Havana, Dowd says of his subsequent tango in Buenos Aires:

"Republicans are frothing and comics are tweaking about the baseball diplomacy in Cuba and the tango diplomacy in Argentina, juxtaposed with the terrorist attack and manhunt in Brussels.

Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore mocked Obama’s 'spring break world tour.' He chided the president for doing the wave with Raúl Castro and remarked on Obama’s sinuous, take-charge tango partner. 'O.K., Republicans, now he’s leading from behind,' Wilmore said. Rush Limbaugh accused the president of flamenco dancing and 'doing the tango with women not even his wife.'

Yes, that outrageous sin of being polite to your foreign hosts at a state dinner."

Now compare Dowd's complacence with Piers Morgan's take on the trip from the other side of the Atlantic in a Daily Mail opinion piece entitled "Twinkle-toes Obama might be a demon at the tango but when it comes to reading the public mood he’s tone-deaf":

"Just imagine what Americans would have thought if within hours of 9/11, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair had gone to a football match and been seen giggling and clowning around with some dodgy communist despot.

All hell would have broken loose, and rightly so.

It’s also vital in this situation for a U.S. president to let the perpetrators of such evil know America means business when it, or one of its allies, is attacked.

. . . .

Last night, to compound his ineptitude, Obama was seen awkwardly strutting the Tango in Buenos Aires with some hot female Argentinian dancer. He even looked like he’d been having lessons, so laboured and precise were his deliberate moves.

Once again, the optics were appalling.

. . . .

[H]istory will now forever remember that when Belgium was knocked to its knees, Barack Obama went to a ball game and danced the Tango.

Shame on you, Mr President."

Shame on you, too, Maureen Dowd.

Thomas Friedman, "Does Obama Have This Right?": A Narcissistic Personality Disorder Threatens the West

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A narcissistic personality disorder that threatens the West? No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump, who, even if he wins the Republican nomination, will lose in November. Rather, I am talking about President Barack Obama.

Notified of the massacre in Brussels, a jovial Obama attended a baseball game with Raul Castro in Cuba (even participating in a "wave"), and then boarded a flight for Argentina with his family. Return to Washington to coordinate with the EU? Not a chance. Why should this horrific attack by ISIS interfere with his fun?

Remind you so something? It should. It wasn't so long ago that Obama ran off to a Martha's Vineyard golf course within 20 minutes of delivering a speech decrying the beheading of James Foley by ISIS.

Yes, as I noted on Monday, Obama suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder characterized by a vehement rejection of all criticism, an excessive need for admiration, and a total lack of empathy for others.

Is Obama dangerous with less than a year left of his second term? You bet!

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Does Obama Have This Right?," Thomas Friedman, an Obama sycophant, cautiously criticizes the president:

"Obama’s primary goal seems to be to get out of office being able to say that he had shrunk America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, prevented our involvement on the ground in Syria and Libya, and taught Americans the limits of our ability to fix things we don’t understand, in countries whose leaders we don’t trust, whose fates do not impact us as much as they once did.

. . . .

That all sounds great on paper, until a terrorist attack like the one Tuesday in Brussels comes to our shores. Does the president have this right?

. . . .

[S]itting here [in Sulaimaniya, Iraq] also makes you wonder if Obama hasn’t gotten so obsessed with defending his hand’s-off approach to Syria that he underestimates both the dangers of his passivity and the opportunity for U.S. power to tilt this region our way — without having to invade anywhere. Initially, I thought Obama made the right call on Syria. But today the millions of refugees driven out of Syria — plus the economic migrants now flooding out of Africa through Libya after the utterly botched Obama-NATO operation there — is destabilizing the European Union."

Friedman's utterly inane solution to the problem:

"Kurdistan and Tunisia are just what we dreamed of: self-generated democracies that could be a model for others in the region to follow. But they need help. Unfortunately, Obama seems so obsessed with not being George W. Bush in the Middle East that he has stopped thinking about how to be Barack Obama here — how to leave a unique legacy and secure a foothold for democracy … without invading."

Assistance to Iraqi Kurdistan and Tunisia will curtail the threat from ISIS? Go back to sleep, Tom.

Like it or not, the United States and Europe are at war with ISIS, and refusal to take ISIS seriously, i.e. enjoying a baseball game in Havana after being notified of the calamity in Brussels, only encourages ISIS to perpetrate additional atrocities, which ultimately will find their way to American shores.

Chris Cillizza, "What not to say if you're running for president: Mike Huckabee on the Iran deal": Even If It's the Truth?

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"If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

- Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General, Hezbollah, October 2002

Today, in a video entitled "What not to say if you're running for president: Mike Huckabee on the Iran deal," The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza pokes fun at Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for declaring:

"This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." 

Sorry, Chris, but I agree with Mike Huckabee.

Chris, are you even aware that Iran has supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with 130,000 missiles, all pointed at Israel, which is approximately the size of New Jersey? Sure, they are not nuclear-tipped, but over the past several years, Iran was forced to cut back on aid to Hezbollah owing to budgetary constraints stemming from international sanctions. Thanks to Obama, those sanctions will now be removed, and as even acknowledged by Susan Rice, significant funds for arms will once again be flowing to Hezbollah when Iran receives more than $120 billion for signing Obama's nuclear deal. Those Hezbollah missiles will not be used against Israel? Nasrallah will launch them in a blink of an eye if he receives instructions to do so from Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Hezbollah, i.e. "The Party of God"? That's the same organization used by Iran to bomb a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 87 people and wounding more than 100.

And what about Iran itself, which is being given the right to acquire or manufacture a nuclear arsenal within 15 years pursuant to Obama's nuclear deal - if the mullahs don't cheat before that time, which they will?

Sadly, Chris's video fails to relate to weekly threats from Iran to eradicate Israel. Relevant to the issue of a second Holocaust? You bet!

Also not a word from Chris about Iran's annual International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which awards prizes for the "best" cartoons denying that the Holocaust ever occurred.

Nor does Chris's video mention that Iran hangs gay men, stones to death women accused of adultery, savagely persecute Baha'is, Christians, Kurds and Sunnis, jails and brutalizes journalists and political opponents, backs Shiite militias in Iraq that are engaged in ethnic cleansing, and executes poets for "waging war on God." Or stated otherwise, Iran is crazy enough to use atomic weapons.

Mutually assured destruction will prevent Iran from launching a nuclear-tipped missile against Israel? I don't think so. None other than Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the fourth president of Iran, declared: "Israel is much smaller than Iran in landmass and therefore far more vulnerable to nuclear attack." As reported earlier this month in a Times of Israel article entitled "Ex-Iran president: Israel a fake, temporary regime" by Tamar Pileggi:

"Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told a Hezbollah-affiliated outlet that he was confident that the 'forged and temporary Israeli entity' would be wiped off the map, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. According to the report, Rafsanjani, often described by Western media as a moderate in Iranian politics, said that Israel was an alien existence forged into the body of a nation which would eventually be destroyed."

No mention of Rafsanjani by Chris.

By the way, Chris, did you happen to notice that US Secretary of State John Kerry is avoiding a stopover in Israel next week, when he visits Egypt and Qatar? That's because of overwhelming disapproval of the nuclear deal among Israelis and the likelihood that he would be met in Israel with massive protest demonstrations. As recently reported by The Jerusalem Post, 78 percent of Israelis believe the nuclear deal will "endanger Israel;" 71 percent think the deal will "bring Iran closer to a military nuclear capability;" and 47 percent "support an Israeli military strike on Iran if it would be necessary to prevent the Islamic state from getting nuclear weapons." You see, Israelis know more than a little about what's good or bad for them, particularly when it involves their continued existence on this planet.

In short, before shooting off his mouth at Mike Huckabee, Cillizza would have done well to learn some basic facts.