…“Another way of putting it, I guess, is that the issue has been the inability of my message to penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I’m not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I’m somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things that we’ve put in place worked better than people might think”…   – President Barack Obama (New Yorker Interview)

It just couldn’t be possible the message itself is what people are opposed to…. Nah, the message is too wonderful.   The problem must be, it just has to be, that it’s just not reaching them.   After all, to accept any other consideration would be to accept that other people’s ideas actually have merit for debate….

We simply just can’t have any of that.

Ugh.

#1   –  Federal prosecutors are now in New Jersey conducting a preliminary inquiry into accusations that aides to Gov. Chris Christie shut down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge as political retribution.  And have issued grand jury subpoenas to Mr. Christie’s re-election campaign and to the state Republican Party, the lawyer for the campaign and the party said Thursday.   (link)

#2  –   Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator, best-selling author and the director of the anti-Obama film “2016: Obama’s America” was indicted by a federal court today. The movie, the second highest domestic grossing political documentary in the United States since 1982, was a huge success before the 2012 elections.  Indicted by a federal grand jury for arranging excessive campaign contributions to a candidate for the U.S. Senate.   According to an indictment made public on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, D’Souza around August 2012 reimbursed people who he had directed to contribute $20,000 to the candidate’s campaign. The candidate was not named in the indictment.  (link)

(more…)

(Via MediaIte) – The First Lady’s birthday party, which took place Saturday night at the White House, was hotly anticipated by the mainstream press, but was also the subject of criticism from some quarters. Her birthday also raised questions from Fox News’ Ed Henry a few weeks ago, when he wondered if taxpayers would be footing the bill for the First Lady’s extended vacation in Hawaii.

At Wednesday’s daily briefing, Jon Karl picked up that thread, asking Carney “The first lady had her 50th birthday party, and I believe you said the president picks up the cost for that party?”

(Any Town USA)  A walk down the 6-mile city street named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. yields plenty of images that would surely unsettle the civil rights leader: shuttered storefronts, open-air drug markets and a glut of pawn shops, quickie check-cashing providers and liquor stores.

The urban decay along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in St. Louis can be found in other major American cities, from Houston and Milwaukee to the nation’s capital.

“It’s a national problem,” said Melvin White, a 46-year-old postal worker in St. Louis and founder of a 3-year-old nonprofit group that is trying to restore King’s legacy on asphalt. “Dr. King would be turning over in his grave.” (more…)

Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach. (more…)

In a bad omen for Democrats hopes in the mid-term elections, Barack Obama’s favorability rating has slide so far that he’s now nine points under the rating for our favorite crack-smoking Canadian mayor.

In the most recent polling, Rob Ford gets 47% of Toronto’s denizen’s approval, while Obama gets a dismal 38% from Americans.  (link)

I swear something has changed.   Whoever is usually in charge is now just phoning in the instructions…..    Read this and tell me that POTUS is still trying to keep up the charade:

(MediaIte)  David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Barack Obama’s fifth year in office, published Sunday morning, includes a lengthy section on foreign policy, during which Remnick asked Obama to square his claim that al Qaeda had been “decimated” with the al Qaeda flag currently flying over Falluja, one of the cities the U.S. struggled to capture from insurgents in the Iraq War.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, in what Remnick himself termed “an uncharacteristically flip analogy.”  (continue reading)

I’m telling you something snapped within the Obama community over that Christmas vacation because no-way in hades would they have allowed POTUS to be so obviously unpresidential.    This is gob smackingly dismissive and reflecting a complete lack of respect for the audience…. bordering on childish.

In the fall of 2012 when the Muslim Brotherhood manipulated the election, and lied to the Egyptian people about the severity of their Islamist intentions, they elected President Morsi.  

John Kerry, President Obama, and former President Bill Clinton were thrilled; and proclaimed it was a joyous Democracy.

Over the next year the Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed Sharia Law would determine their ideological governance.   Morsi visited Iran to align himself with the hardliners.  President Morsi and the radical Islamists began killing Coptic Christians, Crucifying people in front of the President’s palace, and Morsi removed the authority of the judiciary who were trying to stop his ideological advances.   Morsi changed law by dictatorial fiat to allow him to rule as a dictator.

In the fall of 2013 the secular majority of Egyptian people begged the military to rid them of this Islamist regime which was killing it’s own citizens.   They begged for freedom knowing they were duped into exchanging one form of poor freedom governance in Mubarak, for an even worse loss of freedom in Morsi.

The military listened.   They removed Morsi, dispatched the Muslim Brotherood, eliminated radical hardline Islamic extremism, and put al-Qaeda affiliated Muhammed al-Zawahiri back in jail.  

After a period of internal turmoil as the military got the radical jihadists under control, the military leaders then moved to hold elections to vote on a constitution to protect freedom.  This “freedom constitution” was approved by 98% of those who voted in the election. (more…)

Actually, if Obama had a son he probably wouldn’t look like act like a football player…. and his book shelf trophies would be ‘participation’ not achievement.

A football career would be out of bounds for any son of President Obama, who compared the game to smoking in an interview with The New Yorker.

“I would not let my son play pro football,” the First Fan said in a POTUS profile for the magazine’s Jan. 27 issue.   (link)

The Bigotry Of Low Expectations

It’s one thing to hear  pundits say you are racist for expecting quality performance from a black president, it’s quite another thing for the President to say it….

(Via Bloomberg)  President Barack Obama said that racial tensions may have softened his popularity among white voters within the last two years, according to a story posted on the New Yorkermagazine’s website today.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,” Obama said in the article by David Remnick, appearing in the magazine’s Jan. 27 edition.

“Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,” Obama said in his most direct comments on how race has affected his political standing since he’s been in office. (more…)