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Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reports that President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are “soul mates.” Why? Because Obama “disdains. . .needy, showboating allies and [Merkel] is neither.” That’s hilarious. Who on the world stage is more of a showboater than Barack Obama — he of the speech in front of Greek columns, the shockingly pretentious Cairo lecture to Muslims, and the receding ocean tides? Obama’s “disdain” for “showboating” suggests that he’s self-delusional, self-hating, or both. Now that we know how Obama views America’s allies (other than Merkel), it might be instructive to ask how America’s allies view...

The White House sought Monday to share the blame for the failed aftermath of the 2011 intervention in Libya, arguing the U.S. and its NATO allies asked too few questions about what would follow after dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled. A day after President Barack Obama called that failure the worst mistake of his presidency, the White House said Obama believed more should have been done to fill the power vacuum. Although the U.S. played a leading role in that effort, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama’s regrets extended to what “the United States and the rest of the...

In his final year in office, President Obama has spent a significant amount of time emphasizing what he sees as his long list of accomplishments since 2008, but in an interview today he also admitted what he considers to be his "worst mistake." "Probably failing to plan for, the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya," Obama said an interview with "Fox News Sunday." The 2011 U.S.-backed intervention that helped topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi wound up thrusting the country into turmoil that has only spiraled downward since.

The sovereign debt problem of state governments, which was a real problem in 1789, is as bad today as when the Constitution was adopted, but much worse, the sovereign debt of the federal government is so huge that it will never be paid off, and the simple service of that debt will soon become unmanageable. The system of orderly and lawful naturalization in Clause 4 of Section 8 has disintegrated, and worse, when states like Arizona have attempted to at least have state officers enforce federal law, Washington has rejected that help. The borders, of course, are utterly insecure. States...

RadarOnline.com has obtained a top-secret State Department briefing that rips U.S. Ambassador Kennedy’s work at the American Embassy in Japan, citing “confusion among staff” and other “major” issues! President Obama appointed Kennedy, 58, as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 2013. Since then, an investigation has uncovered and detailed 65 charges against the facility, which employs 727 people and has a yearly budget of almost $100 million. Most notably, the report revealed that Kennedy often runs over that budget, and that they found $2.3 million in “funds [that could be] put to better use.” There is also reported “confusion among...

President Barack Obama on Friday boasted of the nuclear deal that world powers reached with Iran last year. Speaking at a nuclear summit in Washington and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, Obama highlighted the benefits the deal would bring to Iran’s economy. “It will take time for Iran to integrate into the global economy, but Iran is already beginning to see the benefits of this deal,” he said, an apparent response to complaints from Tehran that the deal hadn’t delivered promised economic relief after years of international sanctions. Obama called the agreement “a substantial success” and said that Iran...

resident Barack Obama, when asked to name an accomplishment for which he is most proud, said, "I'm proud of saving the American economy." Breathtaking. Let's examine the facts, using only government, left wing -- or, at least, non-conservative -- statistics, sources or analyses. In 2012, the third year of the Obama recovery, the Associated Press wrote: "Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest. ... Economic growth has...

To be a president means regularly to find oneself caught off balance. Sometimes you want to chill at the same moment your enemies move to kill. You may find yourself doing an innocent photo op reading a book to little kids when terrorists launch a coordinated attack on the country. So let’s have a little sympathy for President Obama this week. It has to be frustrating when you set out to make nice with the leaders of a mass-murdering fanatical regime and at the exact same time a mass murder is carried out by a completely different group of fanatics...

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday argued that President Obama appeared "ridiculous" speaking in Cuba in the wake of terrorist attacks in Belgium. "President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly!" Trump tweeted. Others on social media noted that Obama's remarks in Cuba were played on a split screen with the immediate aftermath of violence in Brussels. The coordinated attacks early Tuesday morning in Brussels left at least 34 people dead and dozens more injured after a string of blasts at an airport and...

Bill Clinton is either losing it, or he’s ramping up his attacks on President Obama. Neither is good news for Hillary Clinton. During a speech in Spokane, Washington on Monday, Clinton seemed to tear down Obama to boost his wife. “Literally from the time I met her till we talked yesterday, she is the best change maker I have ever known. “She always finds a way to make something good happen, to make people feel empowered, to buy people into the process, to make democracy work the way the framer intended for it to work,” Clinton said. “Now, if you...

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on the second day of their annual conference in Washington D.C. At a packed Verizon Center, Trump addressed the attendees. The Donald opened by saying that he was a lifelong supporter and friend of Israel, noting that he allowed then-Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani to fly on his airplane to Israel during his visit to show solidarity with other terror victims. “In Spring 2004, at the height of violence in the Gaza Strip, I was the Grand Marshal of the 40th Salute to Israel Parade, the largest...

Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio is downplaying his perfomance in the four states that held GOP caucuses or primaries on Saturday, saying that he had had long known “this would be the roughest period of the campaign.” Speaking primarily in Spanish at a press conference in Puerto Rico, where voters will head to the polls on Sunday, the Florida senator noted that the contests in Kansas, Maine, Kentucky and Louisiana are proportional, saying he’ll leave them with more delegates than he started with. Rubio is eyeing his home state, which will vote on March 15, as the turning point for his...

President Obama's plan to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ran into a buzz saw of opposition on Tuesday, underscoring how difficult it will be for him to fulfill a major campaign promise inhis final year in office. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) best summed up the attitudes of his colleagues: He crumpled up the proposal and tossed it in the trash.

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisors were certain would be played on Bush’s terms – an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush...

"[I]t's been noted often by pundits that the tone of our politics hasn't gotten better since I was inaugurated, in fact it's gotten worse; that there's still this yawning gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics. Which is why, in my final State of the Union address, and in the one before that, I had to acknowledge that one of my few regrets is my inability to reduce the polarization and meanness in our politics. I was able to be part of that here (in the Illinois Senate) and yet couldn't translate it...

In open defiance of recent US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on late Tuesday told local media that Tehran will soon be rolling out an upgrade of its nuclear-capable medium-range Emad missiles. The "next generation of Emad with improved precision" will be unveiled in the next Iranian year which starts on March 20, Dehghan said as cited by the semi-official Fars News Agency. Emad is said to have a 1,700 kilometer range, putting Israel and much of eastern Europe squarely in its sights. [...] In light of an Iranian Emad test on October 10,...

Last week, President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address. In the lead-up to the speech, there was a lot of discussion about the nature of the president's legacy. Less discussed, however, was that most of the president's so-called legacy may not outlast his presidency, since most of his supposed achievements have never been enacted into law.Early on in his presidency, it became clear that the president didn't have much interest in working with Congress in a bipartisan manner, and after losing large majorities in the House and Senate, he made it clear that he did not want...

Commuters driving Pittsburgh's old Lincoln Highway alignment last week caught the last glimpse of the pillars of steam from the Shenango coke plant on Neville Island. Nearly 60 years after the furnace started producing coke for the once-booming steel industry that personified America's strength and work ethic, it is closing - affecting 173 union and non-union employees - as yet another business that made things ends its run. Days later, Pittsburgh-based Koppers, which converts steel-production waste into carbon-based chemicals for aluminum, vinyl and wood preservatives, announced that 52 employees would lose their jobs when it shuts its Clairton plant this...

Three truths fuel Donald Trump. One, Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster. If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck the Democratic Party while turning off 52 percent of the country, then many voters feel that a billionaire New York dealmaker could hardly do worse.

There was a time in my life when I was a campaign communications consultant, responsible for helping political campaigns come up with new and intriguing ways to engage voters using digital media. There is a reason I don't do it anymore, and that reason is, because no matter how many times I or any of my colleages explained that most Republican consultants had the pop culture knowledge of 80 year old men and couldn't find a connection to Millennials if they were accosted by an entire room of Urban Outfitters employees, they still produced things like this. Though, in fairness,...