Tag Archives: Obama

by Barry Kelly | July 28, 2014 · 8:20 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 133

VETS AND TRANSFORMING

There is something about duty and honor that all veterans understand. It starts with “who can I trust to have my back and who keeps their word?” Those who fail those two measurements don’t serve with duty and honor. They just do the time and collect the retirement pay.

I have to be careful here, for it has been a long time since I saw a gun fired in anger and attitudes change. I can’t get inside the head of a young veteran who is three or four decades younger than I am. But I can speculate on the issues they are facing. The big one concerns their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Thousands of well-trained, battle-savvy soldiers, sailors, Air Force personnel, and Marines will be summarily discharged by a commander-in-chief who dislikes and distrusts the American military. He has traveled the world apologizing for their actions over the last several decades.

The damage to the security of America caused by this unjustified downsizing is bad enough but the hardship this progressive ideology places on our best citizens, current and future, is a national tragedy. It is also dishonorable. The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should resign rather than preside over President Obama’s ideological motivation to make American more equal to the rest of the world. Active duty troops discharged against their wishes is despicable treatment for their service. Troops facing this surprise attack must resent the leaders who betrayed them.

Where will they find employment? Medical care for them and their dependents? From a dysfunctional VA? This government-run service has been operating since the Civil War. It is an ironclad example that the no government can or should run a large medical system. Once Obamacare takes hold, we will ALL be in a VA-like system. At least we will be sharing that hardship with our veterans. The high odds of newly discharged veterans finding employment commensurate with their needs are not likely to improve under Obama’s anti-business administration. Training programs are of questionable use and unemployment compensation does end. Will our veterans discharged for a president’s ideological whim view their predicament as anything but the government’s breaking of a promise? I hope they will use their talents and skills to elect a government that will keep its promises.

The Republican Party needs to outline what it will do for these troops. The best plan would be to cancel Obama’s plans to severely cut military troop levels. Next in line would be to pass a G.I. education bill that will enable all who have kept their part of the bargain to get an education that will make them employable in the civilian economy. Unless the Senate and the White House are retaken by the Republican Party, I’m afraid we will find our young veterans turning to food stamps and other government subsidies. Having our veterans become dependent on the government is fine with the progressive ideology of the president and his closest advisers. Is it okay with you?

Read “INSIGHTS Transforming of America Is this what we fought for?”

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, Obamacare, Politics, Progressives

Tagged as military, Obama, Progressives, Republicans, socialism, transformation, VA, veterans, White House

by Barry Kelly | July 13, 2014 · 7:34 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 127

OBAMA’S BORDER

Governor Perry of Texas, whom I respect, said President Obama is either inept or has an ulterior goal. He may be inept but it is hard to tell when you are dealing with a president who does not govern by solving problems. There is no measuring stick. This president is very far outside the American mold for leaders.

It is not that he doesn’t recognize issues. He can smell an issue before it even becomes an issue. In fact he is very capable of creating issues that he can manipulate to achieve his ulterior goals. What is so hard about a border? Every nation has them. Leaving the Great Wall of China aside, most nations have exercised border control to keep people from leaving rather than to keep people from getting in.

America is rather unique. Our problem is securing our borders so we can decide who should come in from the millions of people who want to. And because we are who we are — a nation that believes in individual freedoms and the rule of law — we cannot use lethal force to protect our borders from people who want to be citizens. The solution, in theory at least, sounds doable: Establish a border that stops everyone and allows at the same time for approved applicants to enter either for seasonal work periods or to begin the process for citizenship, a process requiring learning English, a knowledge of our history, and a respect for our law.

Immigration is a good thing. We need the workers at all levels. Our nation’s birthrate is not high enough to sustain a vigorously growing economy after the taxers, wealth distributors, regulators, and hate-America administration is long gone. Enforcing borders is a solvable problem and even the Obama team is maybe up to the challenge.

Here’s the catch: The border issue is too useful to progressives for Obama to solve. The border issue can destroy the Republican Party (which is what Obama’s main goal is). Send the Republican House a request for several billion dollars so Homeland Security and the Justice Department can cope with the humanitarian part of the border problem. The Republican House leadership may figure out this is not the way to solve the current border problem and refuse to allocate the funds. Which is exactly what the progressives running the country want. Then the border human tragedy becomes the fault of the Republican House who, judging by past actions, probably will not recognize the trap.

To avoid the trap, the House should send up their own allocation of funds that is addressed to solve the border issue. Obama may not be able to veto the border funding bill.

Yes, the president always has an ulterior agenda, but it can be defeated with some common sense and toughness. The progressives don’t have to win on the border issue their leader caused and they won’t if the Republican leadership and border governors work together to solve the border problem. I have a lot more faith in the border governors than I do in the Republican congressional leadership.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 126

WHEN TRUST FAILS

Forget for a moment about your biases, whether you’re pro- or anti-Israel, and look at the options the prime minister of Israel has in this growing conflict. He has no good options. He can’t count on the United States to keep the rest of the Arab countries out of the conflict. He must take action. He doesn’t have the luxury of doing nothing but talk. Rockets are falling on Israeli population centers. He knows, as everyone does, that the rockets are being fired from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization. It wasn’t very far in the past that Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip at urging from the West that has struggled, painfully and ineffectively, to establish peace in the Middle East. A peace that the respective combatants don’t believe is possible. Both sides present goals that the opponents are not willing to offer.

Israel wants its Arab neighbors to recognize its right to exist as a nation state, more or less with existing boundaries. The Muslims want Israel to retreat to borders prior to the 1967 war. President Obama has stated the 1967 boundaries should be the starting point for negotiations. Israel believes the resulting Israeli nation would be untenable militarily and economically. Hamas and its West Bank partner would accept those boundaries as a starting point but at the same time render the whole process meaningless by their refusal to formally recognize Israel’s right to exist, regardless of any border. The main player, barely behind the scenes, Iran, has stated repeatedly it intends to wipe Israel off the map. Iran, a Muslim Shia state, funds, arms, and supports Hamas and Hezbollah, even though Hamas is Sunni while Hezbollah is predominately a Shiite organization. Without the aid and support of Iran and formerly Syria, neither group could survive.

Okay, that is the back story. What has changed?

The relationship between the American president and Israel has changed dramatically. Israel heard President Obama’s pro-Arab bias loud and clear. His disrespect of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s visits to America was off the charts. Israel has realized it can no longer count on American support or the word of its leader.

When the trust of America that Israel could count on previously disappeared, their options became more limited. When Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah, who also heard our president speak, no longer believe America is a player on the world scene their options increased.

The might of the United States is off the both the field of arms and the negotiating table. If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it will have to come from the Sunni powers that do not want war and the economic disruption that comes with it. Let us hope that the next administration will revert to supporting our only democratic ally in the region.

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Filed under Intelligence & Politics

Tagged as America, conflict, current-events, Iran, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Muslim, Netanyahu, Obama, shia, Shiite

by Barry Kelly | July 8, 2014 · 7:31 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 125

NEW MAP NEEDED

Put your old map of the Middle East in the pile of historical documents. For a hundred years, the national boundaries of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon followed the contours of the lines diplomats drew to show the demise of the Turkish Empire. Their inked lines paid little or no mind to the impact those lines would have on language groups, cultural and religious realities, and tribal territories.

Iraq is not now and never has been a nation with the common things that make a nation, a nation. Instead, it worked around religious animosities, language differences, and conflicting tribal affiliations. The work around was only possible due to the harsh policies of a Sunni aristocracy that had no hesitation about using brutal tactics to subjugate Shia and Kurdish minorities. The Kurds have wanted and fought for their own nation for decades. At times they have sought Western support only to be betrayed time after time. The Shia are pulled eastward to the strong Persian and Shia state of Iran, the same state that the Sunni leadership in Iraq fought a brutal war with in the 1980s. During that war, poison gas was used against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein was an equal dispenser of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He also used poison gas on the Shia and the Kurds. Only ruthless cruelty and fear kept Iraq a nation.

Vice President Joe Biden, who almost got nothing right in his entire political career unless he copied it from someone else, stumbled on the right solution at the wrong time when he proposed dividing Iraq into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish areas, provinces, or whatever. It was not to happen. His solution was too far outside the box for most of us.

President Obama made all the wrong moves and gave the wrong signals when he took power and pulled all our forces out of Iraq. But let’s be fair. The only way for Iraq to exist as a nation was to put a ruthless Sunni dictator back in power. That wasn’t going to happen. In its wisdom, the Bush Administration destroyed the Sunni-led Iraqi Army and ruling political party, clearing the way for weak Shia leaders to win or manipulate a democratic voting process that prepared the path for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to run a Shia regime that looked eastward to Iran for support and guidance, turning Iraq into an Iranian province.

Century after Western Diplomats drew ink lines to create Iraq and Syria. The tribes are re-drawing them in blood. These borders may last.

— Barry Kelly (@factsfictions80) June 30, 2014

Our president, who has a strong Sunni bias, knew he could not provide real military support to assist a Shia faction to battle a Sunni force. So all the hand-wringing over the number and kind of troops sent now to Iraq and what the president should do is wasted. Iraq is history. Now we need to seek common goals among the Sunnis and Kurds.

Either way, this is a perfect issue for President Obama to follow his mantra, “the issue is never the issue.” He never tries to solve issues anyway, he only uses them to destroy the opposition. In Iraq, doing nothing is close to being the perfect solution. The Republicans will find some way to use the Iraq issue against themselves.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 123

CUT OFF THE CASH

What is Speaker Boehner thinking? Suing President Obama is a sham. Our founders gave the speaker enough power to defend the Congress, only he is afraid to use it. Instead he decided to whine to the courts. “The President stole my toys.” Come on, grow up here.

The House of Representatives appropriates all federal government expenditures. As the Speaker of the House, he controls the appropriation process. The president has no access to funds unless the House of Representatives appropriates them. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the speaker is afraid he and the Republicans will be blamed for shutting down the government. Nonsense. Essential functions can be funded and it is the president who shuts down the government because he wants it all.

Look at the last fiasco, because the House wanted the president to delay the implementation of a piece of the Affordable Care Act, the president decided deliberately to shut down parts of the government that hurt the people rather than negotiate or comprise. As usual, the teleprompter won the war of words.

The Republican establishment let Obama define the issue. As a result, people blamed the Republicans for shutting down parts of the government. Senator Ted Cruz had to go to the House to persuade the Representatives to use their funding power. The House leadership is not being responsible to their constitutional grant of power nor to the people they go to Washington to serve. The speaker would have us believe he is leading the charge to protect the constitution and curb Obama’s imperial presidency. It is all smoke and mirrors.

If the speaker and the Republicans in the House don’t use their constitutional powers to appropriate or not appropriate funds for the government to protect our freedom, provide a strong, well-equipped military, and grow our economy, they are not worthy of our support or trust. There is not much of that left.