Incredible Video

Irony

Isn't It Ironic?
 
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is
pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps since inception.

Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks
us to "Please Do Not Feed the Animals" because the animals may grow
dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.

She's sorry, as am I

Shrinking AARP is Losing Plenty of Seniors

This is an actual letter written by the Millers in  South Carolina . 

SHRINKING AARP IS LOSING PLENTY OF SENIORS 

Fall from Grace

It only takes a few days on the Internet and this will have reached

75% of the public in the

USA .

This letter was sent to Mr. Rand who is the Executive Director of AARP.

THIS LADY NOT ONLY HAS A GRASP OF 'THE SITUATION' BUT AN INCREDIBLE

COMMAND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!

Dear Mr. Rand,

Recently you sent us a letter encouraging us to renew our lapsed membership in AARP by the requested date. This isn't what you were looking for, but it's is the most honest response I can give you. Our coverage gap is a microscopic symptom of the real problem, a deepening lack of faith.

While we have proudly maintained our membership for years and long admired the AARP goals and principles, regrettably, we can no longer endorse its abdication of our values. Your letter stated that we can count on AARP to speak up for our rights, yet the voice we hear is not ours.

Your offer of being kept up to date on important issues through DIVIDED WE FAIL presents neither an impartial view nor the one we have come to embrace. We do believe that when two parties agree all the time on everything presented to them, one is probably not necessary. But, when the opinions and long term goals are diametrically opposed, the divorce is imminent. This is the philosophy which spawned our 200 years of government.

Once upon a time, we looked forward to being part of the senior demographic. We also looked to AARP to provide certain benefits and give our voice a power we could not possibly hope to achieve on our own. AARP once gave us a sense of belonging which we no longer enjoy.

The Socialist politics practiced by the Obama Regime and empowered by AARP serves only to raise the blood pressure my medical insurance strives to contain. Clearly a conflict of interest there!

We do not understand the AARP posture, feel greatly betrayed by the guiding forces that we expected to map out our senior years and leave your ranks with a great sense of regret.

We mitigate that disappointment with the relief of knowing that we are not contributing to the problem anymore by renewing our membership.

There are numerous other organizations which offer discounts without threatening our way of life or offending our sensibilities and values.

This Obama Regime scares the living daylights out of us. Not just for ourselves, but for our proud and bloodstained heritage. But more importantly for our children and grandchildren.

Washington has rendered Soylent Green a prophetic cautionary tale rather than a nonfiction scare tactic.

I have never endorsed any militant or radical groups, yet now I find myself listening to them. I don't have to agree with them to appreciate the fear which birthed their existence. Their borderline insanity presents little more than a balance to the voice of the Socialist mindset in power.. Perhaps I became American by a great stroke of luck in some cosmic uterine lottery, but in my adulthood I CHOOSE to embrace it & nurture the freedoms it represents as well as the responsibilities.

Your website generously offers us the opportunity to receive all communication in Spanish.. ARE YOU KIDDING??? The illegal perpetrators have broken into our 'house', invaded our home without invitation or consent. The President insists we keep these illegal perpetrators in comfort and learn the perpetrator's language so we can communicate our reluctant welcome to them.

I DON'T choose to welcome them, to support them, to educate them, to medicate them, or to pay for their food or clothing....American home invaders get arrested...Please explain to me why foreign lawbreakers can enjoy privileges on American soil that Americans do not get?

Why do some immigrants have to play the game to be welcomed and others only have to break and enter to be welcomed?

We travel for a living. Walt hauls horses all over this great country, averaging over 10,000 miles a month when he is out there. He meets more people than a politician on caffeine overdose. Of all the many good folks he enjoyed on this last 10,000 miles, this trip yielded only ONE supporter of the current Regime. One of us is out of touch with mainstream America .

Since our poll is conducted without funding, I have more faith in it than ones that are driven by a need to yield AMNESTY. (aka - make voters out of  the foreign lawbreakers so they can vote to continue the government's free handouts). This addition of 10 to 20 Million voters who then will vote to continue Socialism will OVERWHELM our votes to control the government's free handouts. It is a "slippery slope" we must not embark on!

As Margret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of Great Britain) once said "Socialism is GREAT - UNTIL you run out of other people's money".

We have decided to forward this to everyone on our mailing list, and will encourage them to do the same... With several hundred in my address book, I have every faith that the eventual exponential factor will make a credible statement to you.

I am disappointed as all get out !!!! ...I am more scared than I have ever been in my entire life !!! ...I am ANGRY !! ...I am MAD, and I'm NOT gonna take it anymore!

Walt & Cyndy Miller,

Miller Farms Equine Transport

Red Tape

I love this guy, Stacy

Our Heros

Back to the Future

This old tool has been reintroduced in Washington D.C.

by the Obama Administration. It will be part of the

New Health Care Program.

9/11 Boat Lift

Swagger Wagon

I know it's a commercial, but hey, it's my blog..

More Than Just Politics

What Would Clint Eastwood Do?

Drunken Sailor

Nina Salerosa

Canadian Thoughts on Obama's Keystone Decision

Birth Control Yes, Government Control No

By JAMES TARANTO

New York Times editorials are often worth reading--stop laughing, we're serious!--because they provide a window into the mindset of the liberal left, the ideological tendency that dominates many major cultural institutions and, for at least the next 11 months, the executive branch of the federal government.

Times editorialists write for people who think alike and seek reinforcement of their prejudices. Unconstrained by any need for compromise or political sensitivity, they provide an honest distillation of left-liberalism, something you can't always get from politicians who need to appeal broadly enough to win electoral majorities or even from the leaders of other institutions that serve a more diverse audience or clientele. What you learn from reading Times editorialists is that the fundamental attitude of left-liberalism today is one of contemptuous ignorance.

Thus after President Obama made a symbolic concession to religious liberty last week, the Times once again employed scare quotes to sneer at the entire idea. This time it was in the very first phrase of its Saturday editorial:

In response to a phony crisis over "religious liberty" engendered by the right, President Obama seems to have stood his ground on an essential principle--free access to birth control for any woman. . . .

Nonetheless, it was dismaying to see the president lend any credence to the misbegotten notion that providing access to contraceptives violated the freedom of any religious institution. Churches are given complete freedom by the Constitution to preach that birth control is immoral, but they have not been given the right to laws that would deprive their followers or employees of the right to disagree with that teaching.

In truth, no one denies that individuals have "the right to disagree with that teaching," and the religious institutions that object to the mandate do not claim the authority to police their employees' private lives or opinions. Rather, they oppose the government's attempt to coerce them into facilitating the practices they preach against.

The editorial continues by assuring the Times's readers that everyone who disagrees is dishonest, because the Times knows what they really think: "The president's solution, however, demonstrates that those still angry about the mandate aren't really concerned about religious freedom; they simply don't like birth control and want to reduce access to it." The evidence for this assertion is laughable:

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, has introduced a bill that would allow any employer to refuse to cover birth control by claiming to have a religious objection. The House speaker, John Boehner, also supports the concept. Rick Santorum said Friday that no insurance policy should cover it, apparently unaware that many doctors prescribe birth control pills for medical reasons other than contraception.

The Rubio and Boehner examples, as described here, offer zero support for the Times's claim that opponents "don't like birth control" and contradict the claim that they "aren't really concerned about religious freedom." The Rubio bill would give broader recognition to religious freedom than an exemption limited to religious institutions.

Podcast

James Taranto on birth control and government control.

As for Santorum, our sense is that he has serious, and quite reasonable, doubts that birth control is good for society, But let's stipulate for the sake of argument that he doesn't "like birth control." First of all, so what? The Times editorialists may believe that birth control is valuable or beneficial, but it's weird that they get bent out of shape merely because other people don't like the stuff. Second, even if the Times accurately characterizes the former senator's views on birth control, it is both a non sequitur and, knowing Santorum, a completely preposterous assertion that he isn't "really concerned about religious freedom."

This columnist likes birth control a lot. To our mind, it is one of the greatest conveniences of modern life. As we are not Catholic, we don't share the church's moral objections to abortifacient drugs or sterilization procedures. But as we are American, we care a lot about religious liberty, and about liberty more generally. Thus we view the birth-control mandate as a particular outrage and ObamaCare more generally as a monstrosity.

Times columnist Gail Collins went off message, beginning her column on the same day as the editorial: "It's not really about birth control." We got a good laugh imagining left-liberals who look to the Times for guidance, driving themselves crazy trying to reconcile the dueling messages.

But Collins is right that it's not about birth control. It's about freedom from government coercion. She wants more coercion; as she puts it sneeringly: "National standards, national coverage--all of that offends the Tea Party ethos that wants to keep the federal government out of every aspect of American life that does not involve bombing another country." But at least she has some rudimentary understanding of the other side of the debate.

Not so Nicholas Kristof, who in his column yesterday treated us to this magnificently funny display of un-self-awareness:

I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.

The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone . . .

Yeah, tell us about it! Physician, heal thyself. But the most revealing Kristof quote is this one: "The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can."

This prompted an incandescently furious response from Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

Nicholas Kristof's statement is light years beyond the President in disrespect for religious liberty.

Where would we find what Kristof describes as "the basic principle of American life," when he goes on to state that principle with language as chilling as "we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can"?

The language of accommodation is almost as old as the Constitution itself, but it was never framed as Kristof frames it--certainly not by the founders who spoke of "inalienable rights" granted to human beings by the Creator's endowment.

Can you imagine any of the founders speaking as Kristof writes, of an intention to "try to respect religious beliefs"?

Mr. Kristof is a serious man, and he raises serious issues in this column. But with this one simplistic and condescending sentence he throws religious liberty under the bus and reveals what makes sense to so many in the secular elite.

They will try their best, they promise, to respect our religious beliefs, and to "accommodate them where we can."

That's it. Don't dare ask for anything more.

Religious liberty--no scare quotes for us--is one of America's basic principles, the first freedom in the Bill of Rights. The separation of church and state protects religious minorities, and nonreligious ones, from the coercive imposition of religious law. It is also a bulwark against a secular government's impositions on private conscience.

Albert Mohler is a Baptist. This columnist is an agnostic. But we're with Mike Huckabee, another Baptist, who said last week: "We're all Catholics now.

Gas prices' earliest-ever rise above $3.50 a bad sign for motorists

American motorists have seen the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline rise above $3.50 a gallon on just three occasions, but it has never happened this early in the year. Analysts say it's likely a sign that pain at the pump will rise to some of the highest levels ever seen later this year.

In 2008, average gasoline prices had hit inflation-adjusted records nationally by the summer, but they didn't climb above $3.50 a gallon across the U.S. that year until April 21, according to the AAAFuel Gauge Report. It happened again last year, but not until March 6.

But $3.50 a gallon gasoline is already here in 2012, weeks before refineries typically shut down for springtime maintenance, and weeks before the states switch from their less expensive winter blends of gasoline to more complicated and pricier summer blends.

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"This definitely sets the stage, potentially, for much higher prices later this year," said Brian L. Milne, refined fuels editor for Telvent DTN, a commodity information services firm. "There's a chance that the U.S. average tops $4 a gallon by June, with some parts of the country approaching $5 a gallon."

Today, for example, the national average stands at $3.511, up from $3.480 a week ago, according to the AAA report, which gets its figures from prices compiled by the Oil Price Information Service.

The average in Pennsylvania is even higher: $3.63. According to GasBuddy.com, the cheapest gas in the Allentown area as of Tuesday was $3.49, at USA Gas on West Tilghman St.

There are plenty of reasons for the high prices, and lots of reasons to fear a big price spike in the spring, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for OPIS.

"Early February crude oil prices are higher than they've ever been on similar calendar dates through the years, and the price of crude sets the standard for gasoline prices," Kloza said, later adding, "We've lost a number of refineries in the last six months (to permanent closure). Some of those refineries represented the key to a smooth spring transition from winter-to-spring gasoline."

Some cities, like Los Angeles and New York, are already closing in on $4 a gallon, said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com.

The current national average is also 38.3 cents a gallon higher than the old record for Feb. 13, which was set last year.

Ronald D. White of the Los Angeles Times and Sam Kenn

Zina Bethune dead: Former ballet dancer dies after being hit by 2 cars while helping possum | Mail Online

Zina Bethune dead: Former ballet dancer dies after being hit by 2 cars while helping possum | Mail Online

Killed trying to help an animal notorious for "playing dead".

Heh, heh....

“Witnessing the Republicans and the Democrats bicker over the U.S. debt is like watching two drunks argue over a bar bill on the Titanic.”

Texans Are Baffled by the Keystone Decision

With all due respect to Governor Perry, it is not just Texans who are baffled-DM

China will get the oil from Canada that could have come to the U.S.

By RICK PERRY

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Beijing recently signing an agreement and touting his country's growing energy partnership with China. It's good news for Canada, which is rightfully looking to grow markets for its sizeable oil reserves. And it's particularly good news for China, which needs to keep tapping into fresh supplies to feed its growing economy and mounting demand for oil.

Unfortunately, it's bad news for Americans, particularly when you consider that one of the main reasons China has become such an attractive market to Canada was President Obama's recent rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline. This cross-border connection would have provided a golden opportunity to partner with our neighbors to the north in producing massive amounts of energy, both for our country and the globe.

It seems unimaginable, yet President Obama refused Trans-Canada's request to run its pipeline across the border from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. This extensive pipeline holds the potential of moving up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day—including oil produced in North Dakota and Montana—to refineries here in Texas. Translated into job numbers, that's up to 20,000 direct jobs and estimates of up to hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs created by this $7 billion project.

Keystone would have provided a shot in the arm for our nation's uncertain economy, and it could have provided economic opportunity for tens of thousands of families, stretching from here in Texas all the way to the Canadian border.

Hoping to appease environmental radicals, President Obama said no, claiming he didn't have time to adequately consider the pipeline.

This is despite the fact the original request was made in September 2008, and Keystone was the subject of dozens of meetings on multiple levels of his own administration, as well as exhaustive environmental impact reviews. Certainly, three-and-half years is more than enough time to make a decision.

His reasoning becomes even more laughable when you put it up against his massive, ill-conceived so-called stimulus bill, which he muscled through Congress and signed within the first month of his presidency.

President Obama wants us to believe he is for jobs, economic opportunity and greater energy security, and his Keystone decision does help meet those goals—for the People's Republic of China. The American people get nothing.

President Obama simply caved to the more radical activist elements of his base who almost immediately decided they would vigorously oppose Keystone, regardless of the U.S. State Department's conclusion that it would be one of the safest pipeline systems in the United States.

President Obama put his personal political interests ahead of improving our country's economic climate.

His decision also relegates the U.S. to continued reliance on oil from volatile nations in the Middle East, where unrest, chaos and Iran's threats to block the oil supply moving through the Strait of Hormuz are driving gas prices ever closer to $4 a gallon.

It's all reflective of a wrong-headed approach that vilifies energy companies, ignores the realities of energy markets, squeezes the pocketbooks of struggling Americans, and doesn't take us one step closer to energy independence.

In Texas, our approach has been steady and consistent, an "all of the above" energy portfolio that cultivates a vibrant energy market that includes traditional sources, as well as wind, solar and biomass.

We're still a long way from doing it all with renewables, and we need to continue finding and utilizing new supplies of traditional energy sources, like oil, natural gas, nuclear and coal, if we're going to keep our economy healthy in the years to come.

That's what Keystone was bringing us. And that's what President Obama rejected.

There are efforts in Congress to find a way around the president's roadblock, led by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, among others.

Unless President Obama changes his mind, or we find an alternate method of getting the pipeline built, all that oil will likely flow to China instead of here, taking with it an all-too-rare economic opportunity.

Mr. Perry, a Republican, is the governor of Texas.

Bo and Jo

DON'T BOTHER WATCHING THE NEXT OSCARS

THE CHOSEN ONE HAS ALREADY WON IT FOR BEST ACTOR...

Q: What's the real problem with Barack Obama jokes?

A: His followers don't think they're funny and.... the rest of us don’t think they're jokes.

Who knew she was a racist?

Black & Unwanted 

The Negro Project was initiated in 1939 by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. It was a collaborative effort between the American Birth Control League and Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau.¹ For a eugenist, it wasn’t controversial, it was integral to the implementation of eugenics to eliminate the ‘unfit’. Eugenics is “the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species.”² Negative eugenics focused on preventing the birth of those it considered inferior or unfit. This was the foundation of Sanger’s Birth Control Policy and advocated throughout her writings, speeches, and her periodicals including “Pivot of Civilization”, “Plan for Peace” and countless Birth Control Review articles. The pseudo-science (racial hygiene theory) of negative eugenics influenced social policy and eugenics-based legislation (Immigration Act of 1924³, segregation laws, sterilization laws) and led to the racial hygiene theory adopted by the Nazis. Noted eugenist, Eugen Fischer, who was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation (one of many same organizations that also financially supported Sanger’s work), was responsible for the Nazi adoption of racial hygiene theory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute that led to the eugenics implementation of the holocaust.⁴ The connection between American Eugenics and the horrors of Nazi Germany are irrefutable. The preponderance of evidence of where Sanger wanted to go (although she decried the atrocities of the holocaust after WWII) shows the ignorance and naivete of eugenics philosophy and its eventual conclusion, left undeterred.  The Negro Project was but a precursor to what eugenists wanted to implement on a much larger scale.

“The main objectives of the [proposed] Population Congress is to…apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

– Margaret Sanger, “Plan for Peace”, 1932 Senate hearing⁵ 

This is the same Sanger who persuaded a few reluctant, yet incredibly influential, black ministers to join in her Birth Control movement. To dispel the rising doubts among those who objected to Birth Control on religious and moral grounds, Sanger wrote that “the ministers work is also important…offering to train him in their ideals because “we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members”.⁶ Many use this statement to bolster the claim that Sanger wanted to exterminate all of the black population, but this statement is about reducing a certain type of black individual that Sanger believed should be eliminated, sterilized, or segregated onto farms.⁷ Those who were poor and (supposedly) less intelligent. Eugenists believed the entirety of the black population were intellectually and racially inferior. (Sanger’s ideological agreement and written/spoken solidarity with the eugenics movements does throw legitimate doubt on whether it was only a segment of the black population that was being targeted.) With the help of elite and famous African-Americans Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. DuBois, and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the Negro Project was able to be sold as a solution to poverty and high birth rates. It is crucial, however, to understand this endeavor in conjunction with Sanger’s dominant efforts of ‘eliminating the unfit’ and her hatred of charitable organizations.  She devotes an entire chapter on charities and how those who finance them “are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst.”⁸

“Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease…Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks [of people] that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

– Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, Chapter V, “Cruelty of Charity”

Black Children are an Endangered Species.
Here is the simple truth.  The intent of Sanger’s Negro Project is firmly intact. Nearly 40% of all African-American pregnancies end in induced abortion.⁹ This is by design. Abortion kills more black people than the seven leading causes of death combined (heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases) according to CDC data.¹⁰ The African-American abortion rate is 3x-5x that of the white population and over 2x that of all other races combined. This is a crisis situation. The media has been mostly silent. Our churches are mostly silent. But the truth screams loud and clear. Under the false liberty of ‘reproductive freedom’ we are killing our very future.

Footnotes

¹http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/bc_or_race_control.html
²http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
³http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
⁴http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Wilhelm_Institute_of_Anthropology,_Human_Heredity,_and_Eugenics
⁵“Plan for Peace” by Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review, April 1932
⁶http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/bc_or_race_control.html
⁷“Plan for Peace” by Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review, April 1932
⁸“Pivot of Civilization” by Margaret Sanger, pg 264
⁹2006 Abortion Surveillance Report, CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5808a1.htm?s_cid=ss5808a1_e
¹⁰

5 Years Old...

She's only 5, which explodes the thought that our National Anthem is too difficult to sing and the words too difficult to remember.  Notice her pronunciation of the word the.  Cute.

Middle East Crumbles Around Obama’s Foreign Policy

Mike Brownfield

February 8, 2012 at 9:46 am

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Thousands are dead in Syria, with more blood spilled each day. Iran is within arm’s reach of a nuclear weapon, threatening Israel’s very existence. And in Egypt, 19 Americans are banned from leaving the country, making them veritable hostages in an unfriendly land. All indications are that the Middle East is crumbling, and President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is collapsing right along with it.

First look toward Homs, Syria — ground zero in the 11-month-old uprising against the brutal government of Bashar al-Assad, which is unleashing death upon its people minute by minute and hour by hour. The United Nations estimates that Assad’s regime has killed more than 5,000 anti-government protesters in the last 11 months, with 200 killed on Friday night alone. The Arab League has stationed observers in country, whose mission was to oversee compliance with a peace plan. That failed.

The Obama Administration rushed to the United Nations Security Council and attempted to pass a resolution calling for Assad to step aside. Predictably, China and Russia laid down a veto. On Monday, the United States finally closed the doors to its embassy in Damascus and withdrew the diplomatic staff over continuing security concerns. Meanwhile, intelligence experts are examining the risk of terrorists gaining control of Syria’s weapons stockpiles should the Assad regime fall.

To the east in Iran, the regime’s full-steam-ahead pursuit of nuclear weapons is reaching a crescendo, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently remarking that the country could build a bomb within one year and have the means for delivering it one or two years later.

Finally, in Egypt, officials there published a list of 43 people, including 19 Americans, accused of interfering in Egypt’s internal politics. They are not allowed to leave the country and could soon be brought to trial on claims that they illegally funded political groups in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. Heritage’s James Phillips explainsthat “they have become hostages in a much larger struggle: the struggle for freedom in Egypt against an unholy alliance between Egypt’s transitional military government and the Islamist political parties who will soon assume power.”

President Obama and members of his Cabinet tried to reach Egyptian leaders on the matter, but in the words of Lorne Craner, head of the pro-democracy organization IRI, “things are getting worse . . . We are all scratching our heads over here. I did two tours at State and one at the [National Security Council]. If the president called someone, something gets worked out.” But as was the case under President Jimmy Carter, the White House appears helpless while Americans are held captive.

None of these crises occurs in a vacuum — except for the vacuum of a cogent U.S. strategy for dealing with these ever-worsening conditions. Since President Obama took office, he has pursued a diplomatic strategy of charm and restraint: attempting to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, engaging with Syria and Iran, and withdrawing from Iraq. Now we are seeing the results.

The international rogue that is Iran continues to rise, along with its threat to the world. Thousands are dead in Syria under a brutal dictator while the international community is serving up effete condemnations. America’s ally Israel appears ready to take matters into its own hands in order to ensure its survival, while prospects for peace with Palestine remain dim. U.S. citizens are trapped in Egypt as anti-Western Islamists seek to consolidate their power. And Iraq’s once-peaceful prospects have been marred by one terrorist attack after another after America’s military forces departed.  Obama has failed at every turn to safeguard U.S. interests in the region or take effective proactive initiatives to deal with threat of rising extremism and spiraling violence that could lead to regional conflict.

There are actions the United States can and should take. Phillips explains that in Syria,  “the best assistance that the United States can give to ease the suffering of Syrians is to help speed the fall of the Assad regime.” And it can do it by working with European allies, Turkey, and Arab states to escalate sanctions, provide humanitarian relief to refugees, and provide diplomatic and economic support for the Syrian opposition — while holding back from military intervention.

To address Israel and Iran, Phillips and James Carafano advise that the United States must have a clear and unambiguous policy that it will protect itself and its interests.

As for Egypt, Phillips writes that America should “freeze U.S. foreign aid to Cairo and give Egypt’s new leaders an ultimatum: free the American hostages or permanently lose U.S. foreign aid and any American help in refinancing Egypt’s burdensome national debt.”

More broadly, President Obama must fundamentally change course toward the Middle East. His policy of engagement has not worked, and the world is seeing the results. The Middle East is crumbling, and an ineffectual and inert Obama Administration is leading from behind with a foreign policy that has entirely failed to cope with the rapidly devolving conditions along the Mediterranean’s southeastern shores and beyond, with consequences reaching around the world.

Quick Hits:

• Yesterday, in a 2–1 decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that defined marriage in the California constitution as between one man and one woman. Read our analysis on The Foundry.
• Student loan debt is pushing more Americans toward bankruptcy — both students and parents. Nearly one-quarter of bankruptcy attorneys say the number of potential student loan clients has risen 50 to 100 percent.
• A suspected U.S. drone attack on an insurgent hideout in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region killed ten people on Wednesday, making it the fourth such attack in Pakistan this year.
• President Obama may have said “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline — and the thousands of jobs that went along with it — but a House committee is working to reverse that decision with its passage of a bill to make the pipeline a reality.
• Americans’ dependence on government is at an all-time high. Read more about it in the 2012 Index of Dependence on Government, just released today, on The Foundry.

Posted in American Leadership