Category Archives: Obama
Obama Lectures Reporters
President Obama lectures reporters on reporting.
Jack Shafer reported in Politico on the president’s address at a journalism awards ceremony.
The occasion was the Toner Prize for Political Reporting awarded to Alley Mac Gillis by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Ayatollah Banking Behavior
IBD had an editorial and the WSJ had an op-ed on Ayatollah banking behavior. Zany authoritarians worth billions who aren’t Donald Trump – I thought it was worth a cartoon.
Now that the mullahs are getting their moola back, possibly 100 billion in frozen assets thanks to the Iran nuclear deal, they want to be able to move it through the U.S. banking system. That’s been a no-no in the past. Apparently it would make it easier to launder money for terrorism. On the other hand it could make it easier for U.S. intelligence to keep track of Iran’s money.
Ayatollah Banking Behavior
Anyway, last summer Adam Szubin of the Treasury Department told Congress, “Iran will not be able to open bank accounts with U.S. banks, nor will Iran be able to access the U.S. banking sector.” Now Treasury Secretary Jack Lew seems less committal saying the administration is trying “to make sure Iran gets relief.”
Since the Iran nuclear deal isn’t a signed treaty, Iran could walk away if it doesn’t get what it wants.
Last Tango in Brussels
President Obama’s been dancing around the Islamic terror threat. He doesn’t want to take the lead. He says the threat isn’t “existential” and more people die in bathtub accidents.
He danced the Tango after the Brussels attacks. He played golf after James Foley was beheaded. John Kerry sent James Taylor to Paris to sing you got a friend after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
While ISIS is losing ground in the Middle East the WSJ reports interlocking terror cells are growing throughout Europe.
Terror Wave
President Obama did the wave at a baseball game in Cuba while a terror wave swept Belgium. Last night he tangoed in Buenos Aires. A round of golf would give him a hat trick of indifference to terrorism.
He feels ISIS can only win if it knocks him off his game.
That and he’s just not that into terrorism. According to the WSJ, he says more Americans are killed by gun violence than terrorism. He’s more worried about the weather.
By Obama’s lights the Vietnam War was no big deal. In 1968, the deadliest year of the war, 16,899 Americans died in Vietnam. That same year 53,831 died on American highways.
Partisan Divide
President Obama said last week that he didn’t contribute to the partisan divide in the country. Here are some other things he has said:
• We’re going to punish our enemies and reward our friends.
• If they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun.
• If somebody wants to build a coal fired plant they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them.
• If you’ve got a business you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.
Holman Jenkins in the WSJ says, “he’s out of his mind.”
Republican Partisan Divide
If the president didn’t divide the country, somebody else must have made that happen. Donald Trump’s rhetoric about punishing his enemies has taken blame from the media and other Republicans.
But left wing mobs made up of the likes of MoveOn.Org and Black Live Matter took credit for shutting down free speech in Chicago Friday night.
Just like on campus.
Trump wants to “open up” libel law to make it easier for him to sue the media.
Rich Lowry says that even George Wallace would have to admire the way Trump parlayed the thuggery into “wall to wall media coverage.”
