Free Republic

Day one of my semi-sabbatical. So far so good. Today’s reflection: CNN's John King reports that Democrats are privately calling President Obama "detached," "flat footed," and "incompetent." Detached? Flat footed? Incompetent? Now who does that remind me of…? Posted from: Michelle Obama’s Mirror 

President Obama said Americans were “better off now than when I came into office,” during a fundraiser Monday night outside of Washington. Obama also slammed congressional Republicans for their focus on the terror attack in Benghazi and the implementation of ObamaCare. The president told attendees at the high-dollar soiree in Potomac, Maryland that his Republican opposition in Congress had been “captured by ideologues” whose principal focus was on “how to make people sufficiently skeptical, so they can win the next election.” “The debate now is about what?” Obama asked. “Benghazi? ObamaCare? It becomes this endless loop.” Obama told donors that...

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards on his foreign and domestic policies lately. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy.

The Obama administration signaled its shame* over a nakedly political decision to indefinitely delay the Keystone Pipeline by burying the news on Good Friday afternoon. The decision was bought and paid for by wealthy green ideologues and green energy rent-seekers, anxious to cash in on subsidies for solar panels, windmills, and other expensive projects that are guaranteed a positive return by taxpayer money.

I would like to share the best rules that place ignorance at the most unsuspected limits. I’m positive you’ll recognize someone close to you who appears to be a true professional but who, in reality, isn’t anything more than an unqualified beginner. These are, in my opinion the most important rules:

Secretary of State John Kerry took exception Tuesday to an assertion by a Republican senator that the Obama administration’s foreign policy is “spinning out of control,” declaring that “that’s just not true.” “You can’t help but get the impression our foreign policy is just spinning out of control,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the State Department budget. “And we are losing control in virtually every area that we are trying to do something in.” Risch cited developments in Russia, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – but focused...

When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, the panel will consider a budget request for international organizations that is 33 percent bigger than last year’s, including a 43 percent hike in U.S. contributions to peacekeeping missions. […] As it has done for the past two years, the administration is asking Congress to waive legislative provisions making it unlawful for the U.S. to fund U.N. agencies that admit “Palestine.” …

Romney still wrong about Russia, says Obama. Speaking at a brief news conference in the Hague, President Obama said he's more worried about a loose nuke being detonated in Manhattan than he is about Russia: "With respect to Mr. Romney's assertion that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe, the truth of the matter is that America has a whole lot of challenges," said the president. "Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neigbors, not out of strength, but out weakness. "Ukraine has been a country which Russia had enormous influence for decades, since the...

What could go wrong? A lot, if you consider the former peanut farmer and president’s last intervention in Venezuela.Joshua Goodman of AP reports on Carter’s expressed interest in going to Caracas: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expressing concern about Venezuela's escalating political crisis and wants to meet with leaders on both sides in an upcoming trip. Carter, a mediator of past political conflict in the deeply polarized South American nation, made the offer in private letters he sent this week to President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Expressing "grave concern" about the loss of life in recent...

The wife of a man with prostate cancer posted on her blog a scathing assessment of how Transportation Security Administration agents treated her husband during a security checkpoint, explaining how one proclaimed loudly his state of incontinence while a second one grimaced and snickered. The woman — who posted her story without giving names — wrote that her husband battled prostate cancer and, as a result, now suffers from an overactive bladder and is forced to wear adult diapers, The Daily Mail reported. Usually when they fly, he’s forced to explain his situation to security agents — but that the...

President Obama says part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "shtick" is to look like the tough guy in Russia. "I think that’s where some of these perceptions come up," Mr. Obama said. "My sense is that’s part of his shtick back home politically as wanting to look like the tough guy. U.S. politicians have a different style. We tend to smile once in a while. ..." ...""There is no doubt we wanted to make it very clear that we do not abide by discrimination in anything, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,..."

ByStephanie Condon CBS News December 13, 2013, 6: 31 PM Sebelius dodges question about whether she offered resignation Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Friday refused to say whether she's offered to resign in the wake of botched rollout of the new Obamacare marketplaces. "I'm not going to discuss what I talk about with the president," Sebelius said from Miami, where she was promoting the new marketplaces. Earlier this week at a congressional hearing, Sebelius acknowledged to lawmakers that the launch of HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare website, was "flawed and failed and frustrating." She hasaccepted responsibility for the failed...

Former administration officials and Democratic operatives say President Obama is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout. First-term insiders argue the White House’s weakness was defined by a lack of preparedness, messaging blunders and failure to keep the president informed. They say Obama’s team lacks depth after the departures of longtime advisers David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs and Patrick Gaspard, and suggest new people must be brought on. “You basically have [White House senior adviser Dan] Pfeiffer and [deputy chief of staff] Rob Nabors running the show...

Iran will decide the level of uranium enrichment in its nuclear programme based on its energy and other civilian needs, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in remarks reported Saturday. His remarks appeared to conflict with the landmark nuclear deal struck with world powers in Geneva last weekend, which states that the enrichment level must be mutually defined and agreed upon by both sides in further negotiations. "Iran will decide the level of enrichment according to its needs for different purposes," Zarif said late Friday night, according to the official IRNA news agency. "Only details of the enrichment activities are...

As many of you know, I spent a good part of 2012 trying to get the Mitt Romney campaign to give me a shot at writing, co-writing or re-writing his speeches. Alas, I never managed to scale the castle wall. So it wasn’t my fault that the only things he said that anyone ever remembered were that 47% of the people would never vote for him and that 20 million illegal immigrants should self-deport. Over the past 12 or 13 years, I have written over 1,300 articles and six books from a conservative perspective, but every time I turn around,...

<p>There have been bad presidents--see Jimmy Carter. Yet has there ever been a president as staggeringly incompetent as Barack Obama? Really,can there be any other explanation for his performance as president than the man is, well...a moron?</p>

Senate Democrats on Tuesday closed ranks behind Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, declaring she should keep her job despite problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. Democrats sought to deflect criticism by Republicans who have called for Sebelius’s ouster over what even Democrats acknowledge has been a botched rollout of the landmark law. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, praised the implementation of ObamaCare for proceeding smoothly compared to other massive federal programs. “If you compare it to all kinds of other programs of large magnitude, it’s actually ahead of schedule,...

.....[BIG snip]..... .....“But what about President Obama’s explicit promise that if you like your insurance you can keep it?” [Hume] continued. “He later amended that to the government is not going to make you change plans. But that’s not true either because the government has made many lower cost plans illegal. Emanuel and others argue such plans were a rip-off and people should have better ones. But better in whose opinion? Why the government’s of course. And never mind the president’s repeated promise it would never come to this. A promise the very design of Obamacare made impossible to keep....

President Barack Obama is distancing himself from the critical task of repairing his crippled Obamacare website so he can return to the campaign trail. “The President is a very interested observer in this [repair] process [and] is being regularly updated on it, and is holding that team accountable for results,” Josh Earnest, his deputy press secretary told reporters Oct. 25, while flying with the president to three fund-raisers in New York. Obama’s departure Friday from the White House illustrates his focus on electoral and ideological gains for progressives, rather than on economic and practical gains for actual Americans. Obama’s aides...

Pollster John Zogby reports in our weekly White House report card that President Obama has put himself in a horrible position with the failed Obamacare website and indefensible spying on foreign allies. "There is no positive spin for the president this week. A weak jobs report and record numbers out of the workforce. “Plus the worst imaginable rollout of a website in the history of website rollouts. Am I correct that the U.S. paid $600 million for [its] Affordable [Care Act] web presence? At least the $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats worked, I presume. “Listening in on German Chancellor...