Obama, the Russian are laughing

Debacle in Moscow

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 16, 2009

About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.........................

What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency............

And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

But maybe not gratuitous. Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it's too late? Just wait and see, said administration officials, who then gleefully played up an oblique statement by President Dmitry Medvedev a week later as vindication of the missile defense betrayal.

The Russian statement was so equivocal that such a claim seemed a ridiculous stretch at the time. Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

"Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions; Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart." Such was The Post headline's succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that "threats, sanctions and threats of pressure" are "counterproductive." Note: It's not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved -- to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? "We are not at that point yet," she averred. "That is not a conclusion we have reached . . . it is our preference that Iran work with the international community."

But wait a minute. Didn't Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face "sanctions that have bite" and that it would have to take "a new course or face consequences"?

Gone with the wind. It's the United States that's now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We're not doing sanctions now, you see. We're back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101502763_pf.html

KN: A great show of weakness from Obama.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced on Friday that none other than Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson will be headlining their annual banquet next Saturday. He will be sharing the stage with 1993 World Trade Center bombing unindicted co-conspirator Siraj Wahhaj. (HT: hourglass1941)

Rainbow Sports, an arm of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s People United to Save Humanity Coalition, will ask the National Football League to investigate the firing of Green Bay Packers’ head coach Ray Rhodes and his entire staff.

"We are asking the commissioner to investigate this situation to ensure that Ray Rhodes was not held up to a different standard," said Charles Farrell, Rainbow Sports’ director. "Even after an 8-8 season, which for Green Bay is tantamount to a losing season, to dismiss a coach after the first year on a four-year contract is premature."

Kerry Says He Opposes More Troops in Afghanistan at This Time

(Remember Thomas Paine's winter soldier)

“It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country, when we don’t even have an election finished and know who the president is and what kind of government we’re working in, with,” Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Cato’s Tanner: Medicare Will Be Cut

Friday, October 16, 2009 12:37 PM By: Dan Weil

Medicare benefits will be cut regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans have their way, says Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.They are going to save that money, the president says, by eliminating ‘fraud, waste and abuse.’ Undoubtedly that would be the same fraud, waste and abuse that presidents have been eliminating since at least, say, Ronald Reagan.”

KN: I have been paying into Medicare since 1965, now they want to cut it. Never a mention of cutting Medicaid. Who most of those never payed into.

If health care was put up to a vote with the American people, would it pass? I don't think so.