Free Republic

President Barack Obama's commander in the fight against Ebola was expected to operate below the public radar. But did that mean invisible? Ron Klain has barely been seen, and a week before midterm elections, Obama is pressing to dispel criticism that the government can't manage the Ebola crisis. The White House's behind-the-scenes coordination of the Ebola response is being severely tested, while the Pentagon and states like New York and New Jersey take public steps that are far firmer than federal guidelines. That's creating the appearance of a crazy quilt of Ebola measures. "The CDC is behind on this," New...

TPM captured the video of this weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open, and it will probably come as a surprise to many readers for the reasons I’ll detail below. Their Obama impersonator, Jay Pharoah, was featured doing a fake presser on C-SPAN where he introduced Ebola czar Ron Klain, who took questions about his qualifications for the job. Rather than trying to scatter the smack talk across both parties, this was pretty much a mockery of Barack Obama’s entire second term, with the fake President himself doing the mocking. “Some people want to criticize the way our administration has...

In another sign of President Obama's deteriorating public support, more than half of Americans now say that he is failing as president, the latest IBD/TIPP poll finds. The poll, which ended Friday, found that 53% characterize Obama's presidency as a failure vs. 41% who rate it a success. Just 6% say that they aren't sure. Obama's standing among independents is even worse, with 58% calling his presidency is a failure. Half of those who live in states that voted for Obama say that his presidency is failing.

It is not President Barack Obama's fault that the media, and hence the public, did not understand what he meant when he said he had "decimated" the core leadership of al-Qaida. That misunderstanding grew when it was revealed that the Osama bin Laden-less leadership of al-Qaida was still alive and had moved into Syria, morphing into what is now known as the Khorasan Group within ISIS -- the Islamist State in Iraq and Syria

HUGH HEWITT, HOST: Kirsten, as a Democrat and as a veteran of the Clinton administration, would you rank for me from most competent to least competent the three Democrats: Obama, Clinton and Carter. Who was the worst of those three on competence issues? KIRSTEN POWERS: Clinton was the most competent, obviously. And then, I don't -- you know, Carter, I was a child, so I didn't live through that. So I don't know if I have as much as a sense of that and I also have a little affection for him because of his human rights work... It is...

I see where everyone is getting all wee-weed up about Big Guy missing 60% of his daily intelligence briefings – what gives? It hasn’t been August for over a month now. Anyway, it sounds like much ado about nothing, right? I mean, just because he missed the meeting that discussed the double-agent status of Anwar al-Awlaki before ordering his whacking-by-drone doesn’t mean that Awlaki didn’t deserve to be whacked. (Sorry about the collateral damage butt you know, you have to break a few eggs…)And besides, just because Barry skips 60% of the briefings doesn’t mean that he misses anything important: “You...

Winston Churchill understood both. Instead of "blood, toil, tears and sweat," Obama offers a coalition of unwilling nations which reject our basic values of freedom. He intends to arm and train "moderate" Islamists who not only reject our basic values but are likely to help the Islamic State and its various cohorts and permutations. Islam is as Islamists doIs Islam the "religion of peace? Here's a video of a debate held nearly three years ago in New York City. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFvklPpGZtA] Video linkWhile arguing that Islam is now peaceful, the debaters so arguing also argued that they hoped it would become so. One even urged those watching the debate to vote...

Ugly news for the President and his party... Here we go. As we get closer to November, we’re going to see more and more polling and - at least so far - most of it is looking pretty ugly for Democrats. Today’s numbers come to us from a new Washington Post / ABCNews poll. For the most part, it’s chock full of bad news for the Dems. However, the GOP shouldn’t be in celebratory mode just yet. First up, we have the President’s terrible approval ratings. As you can see, the numbers are dismal.

A listless summer is the clearest sign that Obama has lost the clout needed to move his agenda. Just in time for the season's final barbecue, President Obama last week backed off his promise (threat?) to "do something" about immigration reform by the end of the summer if Congress failed to send him a bill addressing the issue. He needs more time, we're told. It's a dumb and uneventful conclusion to a dumb, uneventful summer in Washington politics. Obama's promise to rewrite America's immigration law through a mixture of executive fiat and a kind of officious neglect may have been...

Challenging times call for extraordinary courage. But at the risk of sounding indelicate, the only cojones associated with President Obama are the ones lined up on the putting green, where his frequent appearances have given rise to a new meaning of the term “stay the course.” You’d think the so-called leader of the free world would at least sound courageous. But at recent press conferences, Mr. President has sauntered in, often late, leaned nonchalantly on the podium, and delivered a lackluster “lecture” in a tone of voice more peremptory than somber. His record for ambiguity and dullness reached a nadir...

Obama’s America Is September 10th America By Andrew C. McCarthy August 22, 2014 Our barbaric jihadist enemies – the ones President Obama repeatedly assured us he had “decimated” and put on “the path to defeat” – are now stronger than ever. Not stronger than they have been in years, or decades – stronger than ever. They have seized a country-size swath of territory (and growing). They have just beheaded an American journalist – which is the sort of thing they do as a matter of routine but has obviously, and finally, gotten our attention. Not to worry, though: The Obama...

<p>He's been called aloof. He's been called detached. He's been said to dither. They were all correct. Now you can add paralyzed to that list. His worst nightmare (and ours, BTW) has arrived. ISIS is marching across Iraq. Despite their inhuman atrocities, Obama cannot call them the enemy. He's not interested in defeating them and the Washington Post says Obama lacks a coherent strategy. ISIS needs to be pulverized, but Obama is nowhere to be found.</p>

This comes from a UK journalist embedded with the Iraqi military. I wouldn’t treat it as final. Some other reports really raise questions about the 70% number and even the quotes in his own account don’t lead me to believe that such a huge number have died.But it’s safe to say that quite a few are dead. Mount Sinjar stinks of death. The few Yazidis who have managed to escape its clutches can tell you why. “Dogs were eating the bodies of the dead,” said Haji Khedev Haydev, 65, who ran through the lines of Islamic State jihadists surrounding it.On...

On Fox Business Wednesday, former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton declared that under the president’s ineffective leadership, “the world’s descending into chaos” and if America continues to pull back internationally, "you're going to have anarchy increasing." Speaking with host Stuart Varney, Bolton first discussed Vladimir Putin’s hostile strategy in Ukraine and Europe, including increasing the number of Russian troops at the border and conducting cyber-warfare against several European countries—“aggressive” tactics to which Bolton saw no end in sight. Varney then transitioned to the recent WSJ/NBC poll that presents damning numbers about the American people’s opinion of President Obama’s...

At least 4 million Obamacare sign-ups have flawed applications out of the 8 million total applications, according to a report released Wednesday by House Republicans. The Energy and Commerce Committee documents double the claims made in an Associated Press report released earlier on Wednesday, which found that according to a May 8 federal slideshow, 2.1 million Obamacare applications had “inconsistencies” in income, immigration and citizenship data. (RELATED: Obamacare Data Flaws Jeopardize Coverage For 1 in 4 Sign-ups) Federal Obamacare contractor Serco compiled a chart for the committee which displays over 4 million application discrepancies by May 27. The inconsistencies include...

I have spent a good deal of time considering how to approach this column. We know about the "fog of war" when first reports of action are typically incorrect because of the confusion borne of people shooting at each other.There is also the "fog of five years" when memories that might have been, contemporaneously, crystal clear have become fogged with retelling, hearing others retelling, or just plain forgetting certain parts and innocently filling in the blanks.Finally, there is the Galen/Gore Gallop wherein if we tell a story long enough we think it actually happened, even if we made it up...

With her memoir, Hard Choices set to be released in the coming weeks, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her publishing company have provided an excerpt in which she claims President Obama’s actions during the Bin Laden raid were “as crisp and courageous a display of leadership” that she had ever seen. Here are 7 reasons that Obama’s leadership during the raid was neither crisp or courageous...

On Sunday, President Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan to do a photo op with the troops amid fallout from the burgeoning Veterans Administration scandal. Announcing his visit, the White House promptly released a list of guests, including the name of the top CIA officer in Afghanistan. That officer is responsible for intelligence and drone warfare. The information was sent to over 6,000 email addresses. Oops. This is not the first time the Obama administration has compromised national security with leaks, either purposeful or inadvertent. SEAL Team Six. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to...

The government may be paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors, according to internal documents and three people familiar with the situation. The problem means that potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve. They are part of a large group of Americans who listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly — either too low or too high — from those on file with the Internal Revenue Service, documents show. So...

Was Hillary Clinton not merely a mediocre secretary of state but something much worse? Although Mrs. Clinton has spent the last few days huffing and puffing about the fate, likely unthinkable, of the more than 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Al Qaeda-linked Islamic terrorist organization, Mrs. Clinton didn’t do anything about Boko Haram when she had a chance. While Secretary Clinton, who made empowering women and girls a chief goal of her tenure, repeatedly was begged to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization, thus allowing the U.S. to take certain actions against the group, she reportedly fought...