“Always Ready For Closeups”: Dick Cheney Is Still A Petty Hypocrite
Former vice president Dick Cheney resurfaced again this week, to sharply criticize President Barack Obama for being on vacation when ISIS murdered American journalist James Foley.
During a Wednesday night appearance on Fox News’ Hannity, Cheney reiterated his belief that President Obama doesn’t understand foreign policy, and slammed him for playing golf after making a statement condemning Foley’s killing and denouncing ISIS as a “cancer.”
“Every day we find new evidence that he’d rather be on the golf course than he would be dealing with a crisis that’s developing rapidly in the Middle East,” Cheney insisted.
Cheney is not the only person to criticize President Obama for taking a working vacation, nor is his criticism the most ridiculous (for example, The Hill recently criticized the president for taking a walk while “the White House grapples with crises at home and abroad”). But the complaints are especially galling coming from the 46th vice president.
For starters, Cheney’s former boss blew Obama out of the water in terms of time spent away from Washington. To date, President Obama has spent about 150 days on vacation. During his two terms, according to accepted presidential vacation expert Mark Knoller of CBS, George W. Bush spent 1,020 days: 487 at Camp David, 490 at his Crawford, Texas ranch, and 43 at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
But guess who Cheney thinks was better at dealing with crises in the Middle East (never mind the question of who’s responsible for them)?
Cheney himself has some experience with executive branch vacations. Back in 2005, Cheney hesitated to cut his own vacation short after Hurricane Katrina struck, and then pointedly turned down President Bush’s request that he lead a task force designed to speed the recovery effort (White House advisor Dan Bartlett reportedly backed the decision, noting that the vice president “doesn’t do touchy-feely“).
For its part, the White House insists that, like his predecessors, President Obama is perfectly capable of doing his job from outside of Washington. But that won’t stop the media from obsessing over his vacation. After all, punditry is hard during the dog days of summer — and overeager critics like Cheney are always ready for their closeups.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, August 22, 2014
“Bonzo Goes Bonkers”: Boehner’s Contempt For Obama Reaches Tipping Point
As a rule, those who ask House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) about his relationship with President Obama tend to hear the same answer: the two leaders “get along fine,” the Ohio Republican likes to say.
But as Boehner’s frustrations mount, his commitment to a respectful tone has disappeared. The Speaker sat down with KTGO in North Dakota on Friday and showed real contempt for the president with a tone that seemed unusually caustic for Boehner.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted President Obama’s domestic and foreign policies in a recent radio interview, saying Obama was “not prepared for the job.” […]
Boehner also blamed global tensions on Obama’s “apology tour” five years ago.
In political science circles, there are often spirited debates about whether anyone is ever truly “prepared for the job” of the presidency, but the fact remains that Barack Obama has some of the most significant accomplishments of any president in a generation, even in the midst of crises few of his predecessors have had to endure. Boehner, on the other hand, is routinely ignored and bullied by his own members, struggles to complete even routine legislative tasks, and his most notable accomplishment as Speaker – indeed, arguably his only accomplishment – was a government shutdown with no apparent purpose.
One of these two leaders is probably “not prepared for the job,” but it’s not who Boehner thinks.
As for the Speaker’s reliance on the “apology tour” talking point, it’s a painfully dumb argument, but more importantly, it’s beneath Boehner’s office. We expect lazy, recycled rhetoric from random talking heads on Fox, not the Speaker of the House.
Wait, it gets worse.
“There’s nobody more frustrated than I am, but we’re the minority party,” Boehner added.
Well, not really. Boehner is the Speaker of the House because his party isn’t in the minority, at least not in the House. It’s a divided government, but Boehner is nevertheless the ostensible leader of the majority party in one chamber.
Boehner said he is committed to reforming the country’s “broken” immigration system, but until “we have an administration committed to security of the border, it won’t happen.”
“We’ve tried and tried and tried, but he just won’t go there,” he said.
Wait, does the Speaker now want sympathy? The truth is, the Obama administration has already improved border security, and would improve it further as part of comprehensive immigration reform. Boehner won’t even bring a popular, bipartisan bill to the floor, refuses to unveil an alternative, refuses to negotiate with Democrats, and refuses to even consider a compromise.
“We’ve tried and tried and tried”? Have all of these efforts happened in secret because when it comes to immigration policymaking, it appears the only folks who aren’t trying are Boehner and his far-right caucus.
As for the larger point, does the Speaker believe such rhetoric will improve governing prospects over the next couple of years? Almost certainly not, though by all appearances, Boehner no longer cares.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 18, 2014
“Fear Factor”: Iowa Summit Serves Reminder Of Why Religion, Politics Don’t Mix
Of everything coming out of this year’s Iowa Family Leadership Summit, the fear factor is what stayed with me.
It was a constant, discomfiting undercurrent, like a loose nail poking up in your shoe. It was organization President Bob Vander Plaats declaring this a time of “spiritual warfare,” and speaker Joel Rosenberg announcing America is “on the road to collapse” and “implosion,” and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, warning grimly, “We are living in some very dangerous times.”
The third year of the event sponsored by the self-described Christ-centered organization that seeks to influence policy and elections, brought big name politicians Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry to Ames, Iowa, this past weekend. They were there to rally the Republican base in the lead-off caucus state. But the upbeat, love-God-and-country tone of previous events appeared at times to have been replaced by a somber, calamitous note of foreboding. Even Satan got a few mentions.
Projected onto a giant screen to punctuate Vander Plaats’ remarks was a video filled with haunting images of Osama bin Laden, Adam Lanza and the Boston marathon bombings. It depicted a rising national debt, marijuana, Boys Scouts, gay rainbow flag and a woman holding up a “Keep abortion legal” sign. It ended with someone yelling, “God is dead. Hail Satan!”
Sponsors and speakers still exalted matrimony and procreation in heterosexual relationships, called for putting God back in the classroom and government, and called abortion murder. But this year’s message was: The nation is in moral decline. Ignore it at your own peril. That was even carried into foreign policy.
Rosenberg, an evangelical Christian born to a Jewish father, said the United States must not support a two-state solution in Israel because a sovereign Palestinian state “defies the biblical mandate.” Interesting that a Christian American would presume to tell Palestinian Muslims they don’t deserve a homeland because of what the Bible says. This follows an evangelical belief that Jews from around the world will gather in Israel, where the second coming of Christ will occur, and — though Rosenberg didn’t spell this out — be converted to Christianity.
“God loves you but if we don’t receive Christ, there are consequences,” Rosenberg warned.
Is fear a new strategy for the Family Leader and its affiliated Family Research Council and Focus on the Family? Is it a response to flagging interest and political losses? Organizers said there were 1,200 attendees, and that there has been steady growth in three years. But many seats were empty. Is it a concession they’re losing the battle over abortion and gay rights? Abortion has not been completely outlawed, even under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority. Having succeeded in getting three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court voted out over same-sex marriage, a few years ago, the Family Leader failed in its more recent campaign against a fourth. Same-sex couples are celebrating wedding anniversaries with children and grandchildren, and the planet has survived.
What the planet might not ultimately survive — global warming — wasn’t on the agenda. In fact, if this were a true gathering of faith leaders, one might have expected some commitment to keeping the environment healthy, some compassion for the poor and immigrants. There were calls for abolishing the entire tax system that sustains the poor in times of need. There were calls for boosting border patrols to turn back young asylum seekers before their cases are heard. Iowa’s governor, Terry Branstad, boasted of having cut 1,400 state employees and cut property taxes, which fund education, more than ever in Iowa history.
But if it were a political forum to vet candidates, a Jewish, Muslim, agnostic or atheist one would have had no place there. In one video, Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, said, “The only place you get right with God is at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ.”
Outside in the parking lot, some protestors from Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, which describes itself as a social and educational organization, objected. “The summit is attempting to define legislation through Christian dogma,” said protestor Jason Benell. “They want to blur the line between church and state. That’s not what Iowans want.”
He also objected to the idea that faith was necessary to have a good family. His group sees a ramping up of religious rhetoric in response to the Family Leader’s “fear of losing its base.”
Everyone will, of course, vote according to their own priorities. But America is not a theocracy, so it’s alarming to see politicians, by attending and playing to the sponsors, play into the notion that worshiping Jesus should be a prerequisite for federal or state office. America also cannot base its Mideast policy on some biblical interpretation about Israel. Whatever our religious affiliation or lack of it, I’d guess most voters have better explanations for Sept. 11 or the Sandy Hook shootings than God’s revenge – and would like to practical, reason-based solutions from those seeking office.
By: Rekha Basu, Columnist, The Des Moines Register; The National Memo, August 14, 2014
“We Need To Blow More Stuff Up”: Republican Fear-Mongering On Iraq Isn’t Going To Work
Now that the United States is engaging militarily in Iraq, both the Obama administration and its Republican critics are trying to convince the public that their preferred response to the situation there is the most appropriate one. That has produced a stark rhetorical divergence. To simplify a bit, the administration is arguing that this conflict has very little to do with us, but if we do the wrong thing, lots of other people could suffer. Republicans, on the other hand, are arguing that it’s all about us, and if we do the wrong thing lots and lots of Americans are going to die.
When the President has talked about Iraq in the last couple of weeks, his remarks have been a combination of moral justifications for helping the Yazidis and Kurds (he even used the word “genocide”), assurances to Americans that we won’t be pulled back into a ground war there, and discussions of how the ultimate solution to this problem has to involve political stabilization in Iraq. The message that comes through is: This is very important, but it isn’t really about America and Americans. Take, for instance, this interview he did with Thomas Friedman:
The president said that what he is telling every faction in Iraq is: “We will be your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We’re not sending a bunch of U.S. troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things. You’re going to have to show us that you are willing and ready to try and maintain a unified Iraqi government that is based on compromise. That you are willing to continue to build a nonsectarian, functional security force that is answerable to a civilian government….We do have a strategic interest in pushing back ISIL. We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq, but we can only do that if we know that we’ve got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void. So if we’re going to reach out to Sunni tribes, if we’re going to reach out to local governors and leaders, they’ve got to have some sense that they’re fighting for something.”
Otherwise, Obama said, “We can run [ISIL] off for a certain period of time, but as soon as our planes are gone, they’re coming right back in.”
One thing Obama plainly won’t be doing is trying to make us afraid. Not so his Republican critics, however. In any foreign crisis or conflict, their position is always that whatever Obama is doing is insufficiently aggressive. Now that we’re launching air strikes in Iraq, that means they have to argue for more substantial military involvement, which after a while could begin to sound like advocacy for another war. And so unlike Obama, they’re arguing that if we don’t step up our military involvement, Americans are going to be killed in large numbers. Appearing yesterday on Meet the Press, Rep. Peter King said this:
“Well first of all, David, this is not just Iraq. ISIS is a direct threat to the United States of America. What Dick Durbin just said and what President Obama has said, is really a shameful abdication of American leadership. This isn’t Iraq we’re talking about. And we can’t wait until Maliki and the Iraqi parliament to fight ISIS.
“Every day that goes by, ISIS builds up this caliphate, and it becomes a direct threat to the United States. They are more powerful now than al-Qaeda was on 9-11. So Dick Durbin says we’re not going to do this, we’re not going to do that. I want to hear what he says when they attack us in the United States.”
Strictly speaking, it’s true that ISIS is more powerful than Al Qaeda was on September 11. But it’s also irrelevant to what kind of threat they might pose to us. Al Qaeda didn’t need to be powerful in order to carry out the September 11 attacks; that was the whole point. They killed nearly 3,000 Americans using nothing but box cutters.
But King isn’t the only one saying ISIS is coming to get us. Here’s Lindsey Graham on Fox News Sunday:
“His responsibility as president is to defend this nation. If he does not go on the offensive against ISIS, ISIL, whatever you want to call these guys, they are coming here. This is not just about Baghdad. This is not just about Syria. It is about our homeland.”
When Chris Wallace asked Graham if America really wanted to get deeply involved in two ongoing civil wars, Graham shot back, “Do you really want to let America be attacked?” He then followed up with, “Mr. President, if you don’t adjust your strategy, these people are coming here.”
The Republicans’ presumption is that with sufficiently aggressive American military action, ISIS can be dissuaded from taking an interest in terrorist attacks within the United States. Which is possible. It’s also possible that such action is precisely what would get them interested in such attacks.
As usual, what we’re hearing from Barack Obama is that this is a complex situation in which every course of action presents the danger of unintended consequences, while what we’re hearing from Republicans is that everything is actually very simple and it will all work out fine if we just blow enough stuff up. What Republicans don’t argue is that the future of Iraq and its people is reason enough in itself to determine what course we should take; our actions have to be dictated by the danger that ISIS is going to start setting off bombs in Shreveport and Dubuque. That may be because they genuinely believe that’s a possibility, or because they think that fear is a necessary ingredient in persuading Americans to go along with a large-scale American military action.
It may take a while to know for sure, but I’m skeptical that all too many people are going to be persuaded by this argument. After 13 years of taking our shoes off in airports, buying plastic sheeting and duct tape, and hearing the terror alerts go up and down — and more importantly, after the last Iraq war, also sold on the basis that if we didn’t invade Americans were going to die in huge numbers — the fear card isn’t so easily played. That isn’t to say that ISIS might not one day try to attack targets in the U.S. They might. But it’s going to be hard to convince the public that the way to eliminate that possibility is with a large military campaign in Iraq.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, August 11, 2014
“When Will You Stop Beating Your Ally?”: Ted Cruz On Protecting And Promoting Israel’s Tourism Industry
I really thought the peculiar use of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a political weapon against Barack Obama had reached its point of diminishing returns back in the 2012 presidential cycle, when the entire field (with the exception, obviously, of Ron Paul) competed to express how abjectly each as president would defer to Israel’s wishes in using American resources and commitments, in sharp contrast to the faithless Muslim-lover in the White House. I mean, seriously, wouldn’t the tribunes of American Exceptionalism eventually see something wrong with their political representatives demanding that the U.S. outsource its foreign policy to another country?
Leave it to Ted Cruz to take it all to another level, accusing the administration of telling the FAA to ban flights into Tel Aviv as part of a pro-Hamas conspiracy:
“Given that some 2,000 rockets have been fired into Israel over the last six weeks, many of them at Tel Aviv, it seems curious to choose yesterday at noon to announce a flight ban, especially as the Obama Administration had to be aware of the punitive nature of this action.
“Tourism is an $11 billion industry for Israel, which is in the middle of a summer high season already seriously diminished by the conflict initiated by Hamas. Group tours have been cancelling at a 30% rate. This FAA flight ban may well represent a crippling blow to a key economic sector through both security concerns and worries that additional bans will down more flights and strand more passengers. It hardly matters if or when the ban is lifted. At this point, the damage may already be done….
Secretary of State John Kerry issued a veiled threat last February when he encouraged boycotts of Israel [sic] and said that absent serious Israeli concessions at the negotiating table, Israel’s economic prosperity was ‘not sustainable’ and ‘illusory.’ Secretary Kerry unfortunately reprised this theme just this April, when he threatened that Israel risked becoming an ‘apartheid state’ if Israel did not submit to his chosen solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis.
“Taken in the context of Secretary Kerry’s comments, yesterday’s action by the FAA raises some serious questions.
So apparently the United States has an obligation, at the potential expense of the safety of its own citizens, to promote the security claims of another country in order to protect said country’s tourism industry. Anything less than that is to side with Israel’s enemies, whose bloody hands Obama is already shaking by continuing humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
How much further can Republicans move the goal posts here? Should we become more militantly pro-Israel than the Israelis themselves?
I know this is a sweet spot for conservatives because it pleases a certain type of evangelical Christian activist and projects bloody-minded “strength” without risking a commitment of U.S. troops, since the Israelis really can take care of themselves from a military point of view. And the Palestinians, of course, are the overseas equivalent of those people here, somehow still held to be responsible for 9/11. But if there is a Republican president any time soon, the GOP isn’t doing him or her any favors by mortgaging half its foreign policy to the interests of a single foreign state, however admirable.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 24, 2014
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