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Foreign Policy Gaffes

By Larry Johnson on March 12, 2009 at 9:40 PM in Current Affairs

When the comedy shows, especially Jon Stewart, start banging on you it is a sign the honeymoon is kaput.

The DVD “gift” is so cheesy and cheap. What moron in the White House made this call?

  • jbjd

    (OT but important.)

    Now that BO has indicated he might call up the National Guard to federal service in the conflict along the US-Mexican border, it is time to re-visit my original proposal to use NG Plaintiffs in a federal Declaratory Judgment suit to determine his Constitutional eligibility to be POTUS.

    Obama Says National Guard Might Be Sent To US-Mexican Border
    http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/12/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4861510.shtml

    Early last November, I posted a memo entitled, FIND OUT WHETHER BARACK OBAMA IS A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN AS REQUIRED UNDER ARTICLE II OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND STOP THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE FROM VOTING FOR HIM, IF HE IS NOT! This explained my then new solution to gaining standing to challenge BO’s Constitutional eligibility in federal court, by using military Plaintiffs. In that memo, I specifically proposed using National Guard, about to be deployed. As I recently explained in detail on my blog, in responses to comments posted by my readers, NG are under the control of the Governor of the state until called up to serve in the military and are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice until federalized. Plus, the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, under which my Complaint is brought, acts as sort of a class action mechanism, without having to certify the class. That is, the ruling received by one Plaintiff applies to all similarly situated Plaintiffs. In effect, this means that if one Plaintiff gets called up to active duty, meaning he is federalized and under the jurisdiction of the UCMJ, he can drop out; and another NG member not yet called up can be substituted, no harm, no foul.

    Please pass the word about this safe viable option to vet the CIC.

    http://jbjd.wordpress.com/

    • candymarl

      Let’s see Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexican border. Now how many troops is the anti-war candidate going to send where?

      I’m not saying some of this is not necessary. What I’m saying is this sure sounds completely different from what Obama promised while running for office.

      The excuse that he wasn’t President yet so he couldn’t he know won’t wash. He was a sitting Senator. He had 300 advisers for goodness sake while running for President. None of them could find out these things?

      Also, the violence on our border has been going on for how long? But Obama is just now noticing. Perhaps his Wednesday night parties, or his vacations, distracted him.

  • lark

    You mean in the making?

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5898650.ece

    I think is time to buy gold. Actually I am recommending gold. Go broke for it. And keep it until Nov 4, 2012. You may strike rich.

    • TeakwoodKite

      My question is why now?

    • mountainaires

      Not just China–Pakistan. As for Gold, well, I agree with you there, too, Lark. But, I don’t agree anyone should go broke for it! :-) A little bit of hedge can’t hurt, though.

  • chris from Chicago

    This is running like a very SCARY bad movie..
    I thought Bush was a jackass…and he was..but I thought that he was an aberration…NOT!
    Now we have Obama and his Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight…
    This is truly turning into a circus..

    THERE IS NO DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT

    THESE GUYS DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING..
    WHAT THEY SAY DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE…
    AND THEY LOOK SCARED, UNHINGED AND IN DISARRAY…
    WTF!

  • Animal Control

    I believe that be The Moron in Chief

  • Obama: Dubya II Electric Boogaloo

    John Stewart is an asshat. Obama has no “ancestrial hertigate” to slavery.

    We’ll know when the honeymoon is kaput, when, you know, the press like starts doing their jobs, stops cheerleading for him, and asks Obama more than softball questions and letting his incompetence slide.

    • candymarl

      Yes, I agree he has not such heritage. But it’s all part of the Obama myth.

      I just don’t think the entertainment types can admit they were so far off.

    • kgirl1028

      Even if Obama is not of slave heritage ( I am yipdeefreekendodah) just the idea that the British prime minister would give him something made from the wood of his desk’s sister ship is just freeking amazing and thoughtful. and just like the twin desks presented to the president by the queen of england, it says we are sister countries we have each others back. Verses 25 dvd that Brown can’t watch not only because he’s blind but because they are Region One dvds and can’t play on Region two. Although if brown kids have a laptop he might be able to change the region on that and watch it. Yay!

      • getfitnow

        That thoughtful gift presented by PM Brown was presented to the country not to BO. I wish he and his wife understood they represent the USA not themselves.

  • rjj

    The WH social schedule:

    2/18 Sweet Honey in the Rock
    2/22 Superbowl party with Earth Wind Fire concert afterward
    2/25 Stevie Wonder broadcast
    3/3 Gordon whats-his-name from overseas arrives bearing gifts
    3/4 dinner with congressional committee people
    3/8? Chicago Bulls arrive bearing jersey

    No wonder he doesn’t have the time or the energy for state dinners.

  • I’m a Linda too

    Weary Barry is just so embarrassing. The guy is just making the most awful decisions and then this.

    The video Susan posted said it much better than Jon Stewart, because she wasn’t worried about hurting Weary Barry BOberry’s feelings, but stating the facts.

    When you hear everything he brought the Empty One, and then Obama gives what he does, and he’s legally blind on top of that, it’s just a disgrace.

    Then, MEchelle goes further. She doesn’t buy the Brown’s children anything and only after receiving such beautiful gifts for her daughters, TopShop outfits and matching jewelry, Mechelle has a staffer run down to the store and pick up two plastic model helicopters? Surely the Obama administration can’t claim that Michelle too is just so overwhelmed from the economic situation.

    Pitiful.

    • I’m a Linda too

      I just realized, maybe this is why Obama doesn’t want to attend the Gridiron dinner, he can’t handle any joking, like this one surely to be a hot topic. Oh wait, maybe if we go back to the start of his admin, there’s just SO MANY people could mention.

  • QUEENIE

    Obama Justice Department Urges Dismissal of Another Torture Case (Rasul v. Rumsfeld)
    Source: The Washington Independent

    Obama Justice Department Urges Dismissal of Another Torture Case
    By Daphne Eviatar 3/12/09 6:46 PM

    In another move that suggests the Obama Department of Justice is not making many big policy breaks with its predecessor when it comes to the legal rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees, the department filed a brief renewing the government’s motion to dismiss the case of Rasul v. Rumsfeld.

    The case is very similar to the lawsuit filed by U.S. citizen and former enemy combatant Jose Padilla against former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, which I’ve been following. The plaintiffs in Rasul v. Rumsfeld allege that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior Bush officials are responsible for their torture; prolonged arbitrary detention; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; cruel and unusual punishment; denial of liberties without due process, and preventing the exercise and expression of their religious beliefs.

    According to their legal complaint, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed claim they traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 to offer humanitarian relief to civilians. In late November, they were kidnapped by Rashid Dostum, the Uzbeki warlord and leader of the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance. He turned them over to U.S. custody – apparently for bounty money that American officials were paying for suspected terrorists. In December, without any independent evidence that the men had engaged in hostilities against the United States, U.S. officials sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Over the next two years, they claim — as does a fourth British man — that they were imprisoned in cages, tortured and humiliated, forced to shave their beards and watch their Korans desecrated, until they were returned to Britain in 2004. None were ever charged with a crime.

    Dismissed at the urging of the Bush administration, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, the case was sent back to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington for reconsideration, because the Supreme Court had ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees have the right to

    Read more: http://washingtonindependent.com/33679/obama-justice-de...

    hopium anyone?????????

  • mylifeontheglist

    Guys, vote on MSNBO poll, now Obot flooded the site and gave Bambi A by 40% while F 39% (it was 59% this morning).

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093

    • http://deleted Buzz Latte LaRue

      Not to worry. Greta already reported the real numbers.

      Once again the only ones the obots are fooling are themselves.

  • Retired

    When it comes to class gift giving, can’t we ever get it right? And who the hell in the State Dept came up with the wrong Russian word for reset? Jesus!

    • TeakwoodKite

      That one a was a good one…what happen to all the Russian language skills at foggy bottom?

      • Retired

        The reset button was an inappropriate “gift” beneath the dignity of the office of Secretary of State and the American people.

        I was once responsible for selecting a gift for the chief executive of a country. I asked some trusted locals about what a prestigious gift for a distinguished person would be and they all pretty much came up with the same answer. Frankly, I wouldn’t have selected that gift for a pig’s Bar Mitzvah (multiple puns intenteded), but I went ahead and bought the damn thing anyway and caught considerable shit about it from my boss–until he have it to the chief of state.

        The guy went absolutely nuts over the gift, which wasn’t that unusual as he came from a culture of habitual effusiveness, but he then carried it and used it wherever he went (for all I know, he might still be carrying and using it which, considering the country he is from, is a considerable accomplishment). He would pull it out during interviews with reports and say that it was a gift (without telling who it was from, of course) and say, “Isn’t it beautiful?” One time I was having a drink with a reporter after such an interview and the reporter was speculating on “..which one of his mistresses gave him that damn thing.” Luckily, I take my scotch neat, or I probably would’ve swallowed an ice cube.

        Not to make too fine a point of it, but if I, as a junior spook, could get it right for a chief of state, how come the shitheads across the river can’t ever translate a simple Russian word for a foreign minister?

  • elise

    Was this really a gaffe or a deliberate snub, Larry? If he hadn’t sent the Churchill bust back and if he had arranged a state dinner and if he had held a joint news conference, the gifts could have been forgiven and written down as a gaffe. There could be a third possibility. He and his staff could have known what was expected and been too lazy or too insecure to have engaged in the normal duties. The protocol officer could have handled some of the arrangements, but Michele would have expected to approve the menu for the dinner, a visit to Camp David would have included enough time for the PM and his wife to really get to know the Obamas and found there was no there…there. An open press conference standing next to someone with experience may have been more than BO could handle and risked the possibility of a worse gaffe. The gifts are pretty inexplicable. Who did they send to the gift shop and Blockbusters and when? And the reset button for the Russian Foreign Minister? Who arranged the engraving and who did the translation? At least Hillary was poised and charming enough to respond to the situation with humor and apologies.

    A few minutes later, Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines sent an e-mail message to reporters covering the Secretary of State.

    “Since we’re all learning a little Russian today, ‘opechatka’ is Russian for ‘typo,’” he wrote. “So the *Opechatka* is being fixed, the gift will correctly read ‘Perezagruzka’ by the time of the joint press conference. If any of you travel with labelmaking devices equipped with Russian spell-check, please do let me know…”

    Obama’s staff said he was tired and overwhelmed. OMG.

    • jbjd

      That’s how to handle a gaffe. Wonder whether Solis Doyle wishes she was a member of the ‘good staff’ now.

      • elise

        I don’t know how she feels, but I’m glad she isn’t.jbjd. She’s a traitor and she’s right where she belongs. With Joe Biden.

  • Sassy

    The DVD collection is only the beginning.
    I bet they have an attic full of junk in Chicago that they plan to recycle as gifts.
    We know they are cheap-skates!
    We also know, by now, that they have no plans to take Carnegie Courses on self-improvement!

  • Murray

    I found this to be the most well-researched article so far, on just insulted the Brits are, over this grand insult. They’re even quoting MEchelle’s Princeton thesis.

    http://headingright.com/2009/03/12/44-obamas-shaky-start-on-foreign-policy/

    I found it in, believe it of all places, AOL’s Political Machine section.

  • mountainaires

    It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama’s high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration.

    Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

    Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001.

    Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.

    Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance.

    This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

    full article:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690358175013837.html

  • Ford Prefect

    I found this to be the most well-researched article so far, on just insulted the Brits are, over this grand insult. They’re even quoting MEchelle’s Princeton thesis.

    http://headingright.com/2009/03/12/44-obamas-shaky-start-on-foreign-policy/

    I found it in, believe it of all places, AOL’s Political Machine section.

    Oh give me a break. Speaking as a “Brit”, rather than a p[artisand right-wing hack, that article’s a POS.

    Actually, a lot of us “Brits” are laughing our socks off as some of you try to convince yourselves that we’re feeling “insulted”.

    Brown was in power along with Blair when we were blatantly and repeatedly lied to in order to get us embroiled in Iraq, and as long-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was under Brown’s watch that we staggered into this current financial calamity.

    We couldn’t give a stuff about gifts. It’s obvious to anyone but a biased moron that Gordon was busy trying to ingratiate himself with Obama as much as possible, after eight long years of sucking up to G.W. The UK got little enough in return for all its efforts during G.W.’s reign of terror – the gladhanding of Blair made quite a few of us sick to our stomachs. If there’s any residual coolness in the US-UK governmental relationship, maybe it’s a result of those long years politicians like Brown spent as Bush’s lapdogs.

    As it was, the rare honour of being allowed to address Congress will have much more than compensated for any of the imagined slights you keep banging on about anyway.

    You’ll find that most “Brits” are actually quite taken with your new president. With luck, he may help to drag politics in our own country back from the centre-right morass it’s been mired in for too long.

    • andrew191

      If most Brits are actually quite taken with Obama, then most Brits must suffer the same level of vision problems as their PM. If you are so enamored with the fraud Obama, please take him, let him screw YOUR socialist Island.

  • Ford Prefect

    … most Brits must suffer the same level of vision problems as their PM

    Classy. May you never lose an eye, as Brown did.

    Still, by all means go back to your bleating about something that’s a non-issue to the people you’re supposedly being offended on behalf of. It’s marginally amusing, but in the end totally stupid.

    • andrew191

      If you’re really a Brit then you’ll not be on the hook for the taxes we colonial suckers have been unwittingly lured into, and will be paying for as if to loan sharks for generations.

      More to the point, I couldn’t care less if you and your ingrate friends are or aren’t offended by the insults of our tawdry first couple. Obama and his cast of clowns and twits unfortunately represent all Americans, and as such, they should at least make more than a dismissive attempt at honoring a foreign official. I don’t care if they’re from England or Kiribati, the Presidents attitude is assumed to be a reflection of the country’s attitude. While you may not be offended, I sure as hell am offended by the shabby display of the POTUS.

  • Ford Prefect

    And another thing – why do some of you fools keep insisting that Brown’s blind? Is it because you believe everything you read, and some idiot somewhere suggested that films were a bad choice of gift for him because he couldn’t watch them?

    He lost one eye. As far as I know, the other works fine. Maybe that’s how he manages to constantly refer to written notes when he speaks in Parliament etc. (Oh, and multi-region DVD players are very common over here, if that’s another thing that’s bothering you.)