Powerline: Photo of the Day – The scene is Yarmouk, a district of Damascus that is populated largely by Palestinian “refugees” and has been the scene of heavy fighting. The U.N. gained access to Yarmouk and passed out food there. These people are hoping to get something to eat.
CNN vs. Ted Nugent
Obama apparatchik & CNN anchor, Erin Burnett, tried to crucify Ted Nugent but he refused to cower to her PC smear:
Why can’t Republican politicians stand their ground in this way?
More here.
QOTW
Yes, maybe Yanukovych erred by not using chemical weapons on Maidan. Then he could have given them to Obama and Kerry to stay in power.
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 22, 2014
Why Turkey Is Gone For Good
As David Goldman explained last week in a financial analysis of Turkey’s incipient economic meltdown in The Asia Times, rather than raise consumer interests rates, Erdogan has blamed the Jews by railing against “the interest rate lobby.”
Indeed, since he first invoked the term during the anti-government demonstrations last August, Erdogan has taken to blaming the interest rate cabal for all of Turkey’s woes.
Goldman argues that part of Turkey’s credit crisis owes to its apparent reliance on interbank loans from Saudi Arabia. In part due to their anger at Erdogan for his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis have apparently stopped loaning to Turkish banks.
The Saudis’ action has pushed Erdogan into the waiting arms of Iran’s ayatollahs. In an interview with Business Insider, Australia, terror financing expert Jonathan Schanzer said Turkey and Iran were able to minimize the impact of the international sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. Between June 2012 and June 2013, the Turkish-Iranian “gas for gold” sanctions-busting scheme brought Iran $13 billion in hard currency.
Erdogan’s hatred of Jews, his authoritarian mindset and his Islamist ideology informed his decision to transform Turkey into one of the leading sponsors of terrorism. In addition to its massive support for Hamas, beginning in the 2006 First Lebanon War Turkey began providing assistance to Hezbollah.
Then there is al-Qaida…
Global Test
The world is in the very best of hands.
Kerry told reporters Obama was concerned about the deterioration in the humanitarian situation in Syria and also by the fact that peace talks between the opposition and government had not produced a discussion of a transitional government as had been planned.
As a result, Kerry said, “he has asked all of us to think about various options that may or may not exist.”
Operation Empty Chair
National Intelligence Director James Clapper Was asked by Senator John McCain during a Senate hearing whether he had seen the documents, published by an array of media outlets including CNN, as potential proof of atrocities by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Clapper said he had, and that he believed they were real.
“They’re terrible. And when you consider the humanitarian disaster in addition to the 2.5 million refugees, the 6.5 million or 7 million that are internally displaced, the 134,000 plus people that have been killed, it is an apocalyptic disaster,” he said.
Heckuva job, Barry – Only 11% of chemical weapons removed from Syria
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
George Will on “the perils of government run by believers in magic words and numbers.”
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Game day. pic.twitter.com/95RA9iH8rc
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 2, 2014
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Operation Empty Chair
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) had a simple question Wednesday for three of the Obama administration’s top Afghanistan specialists: How many American troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year? None of the witnesses at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Afghanistan had an answer.
h/t Ed S.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
Pen, phone and IRS – “If Obama used to sigh to supporters that he was not a dictator who could just implement progressive agendas by fiat, he now seems to have done away with the pretense of regret.”
Operation Empty Chair
‘You live in NY, I live in Syria.’
Muallem painted a bleak picture when describing the many perils the Syrian people are currently enduring, while accusing some foreign nations, including Turkey, of supporting terrorists in Syria. But the coalition – which mostly consists of self-exiled Syrians who have not been in the country for years – was the subject of particular scorn.
As the minister was blasting the SNC for selling their allegiance to the highest bidder and enjoying a comfortable life in five-star hotels while people died on the ground in Syria, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon interrupted the speech, asking whether he needed much time to wrap it up.
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal”
Forward! 9 Violent Criminals Who Paid Less for Bail Than ‘2016′ Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza
It’s Probably Nothing
They lied.
And as we surmised at the time, it was General Ham who was the only one on the ball that night. Sec State Screech and Bam-Bam lied to the US public, lied to the military and left people to die knowing full well what was going on.
WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”
HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”
HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”
The Cult of Obama
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” ― Margaret Thatcher
“Duty”
“All too early in the [Obama] administration,” he writes, “suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander in chief and his military leaders.”
Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.”
He writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
Only man on the planet who needed to be told.
Bin Laden is Dead And Ambassador Stevens Is Dead
It seems Al-Qaeda is everywhere these days, excepting Benghazi, where the NYT assures us that a video was responsible for occasioning the burning of the US consulate there.
Still al-Qaeda’s resurgence is disturbing given the assurances as recently as the last presidential election that Osama bin Laden was dead and Detroit was alive. And what shall one make of Karzai a-fixing to double cross the United States?
[…]
Well nobody said the course toward a world without nuclear weapons ran smooth. Never mind. At least John Kerry’s on track to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is on track. That’s reassuring in the wake of news that “Hezbollah has been transferring its long range missiles out of Syria and into Lebanon, including missiles which could reach the heart of Israel, the New York Times reported on Friday.” Foreign Policy is reporting that in addition, Hezbollah has acquired sophisticated anti-ship missiles that it has smuggled into Lebanon.
Read the whole thing.
Operation Empty Chair
Operation Empty Chair
The Obama administration’s outreach to the Islamic Front in Syria earlier this month failed due to a flawed plan and unrealistic goals, insiders say–and now American influence on the ground with the armed Syrian opposition is at a new low.
Update: Syria misses deadline to remove chemical weapons