What a Week! Obama's Choices and Turkey and Iranian Elections A La Latma

Let's start with Latma's news report from Turkey, Iranian elections and other tidbits.

Caroline Glick and her Tribal Update writers get it Right for sure.

Ruthie Blum thinks that things can't get much worse when it comes to United States President Obama,   Rice and Power can't make things worse, but in a rare move, I disagree.  I do agree with what Blum writes about Obama, Rice and Power, but I think it's dangerous to ever think that things can't get worse.   

"Indeed, Rice's appointment exemplifies the low-life political workings of the Obama administration: The better someone is at covering the president's tracks, the more he or she is rewarded for it. In Rice's case, this involved the Benghazi horror. After four Americans, among them Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in a carefully planned terrorist attack in Libya last Sept. 11, Rice wittingly and willingly became liar-in-chief for the White House and State Department. With gusto and disdain she hit the airwaves to perpetuate the bald-faced prevarication that the murders in Benghazi were the unfortunate result of a spontaneous Arab protest that had erupted as a result of an American-made video critical of Islam's Prophet, Muhammad.

Much as been written recently about what went on in Benghazi prior to the attack. One key theory is that the Obama administration had armed revolutionaries in Libya and Syria, and that Stevens was in the process of retrieving American weapons from Libyan jihadists when the policy was understood to be a bad one. It is believed that because Obama did not want any of this to emerge in time for it to harm his chances for re-election, he basically abandoned Stevens and the others to the killers. Whatever other facts come to light in the future, one is certain: A Special Forces rescue operation was not approved....

This is not the only reason for her promotion, however. Two others are equally relevant. One is that a presidential appointee for national security adviser is not required to obtain congressional confirmation. This means that Rice won't have to undergo any grilling that might expose her and her bosses' falsehoods.

The second is that, as national security adviser, Rice will enjoy the umbrella of the president's "executive privilege," granting her immunity from charges of contempt if she declines to testify in hearings on the Benghazi scandal.

Criticism of the Samantha Power nomination is centered on statements she made about Israel more than a decade ago. In 2002, when she was the director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Power gave an interview to University of California professor Harry Kreisler on a college campus radio show. When asked by Kreisler what she would advise the president if there were a serious human-rights crisis in "Israel-Palestine," she gave a glib answer indicating that she would support sending the U.S. military to protect the Palestinians from Israel." 

When people say that, it's like an eyin haraa causing things to davka get worse.

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov

Obama's Lucky Timing, Scandals are Discovered in Second Term

Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

United States President Barack Hussein Obama is just one of those lucky ones.  He managed to get reelected very easily, and the #$!%$! hit the fan only afterwards.  Eventually history my judge him fairly and accurately, but right now he is totally coated with Teflon, as the saying goes.

Consider Obama's background.  He was raised by a rather unstable extreme Leftist mother who left home young and had a hankering for foreign men of other races.  After schlepping him around the world, she let her parents raise him.  He had to deal with being biracial in a white world.  There are all sorts of scandalous posts you can find on the internet claiming that he became a drug addict, homosexual etc., but whatever the truth he managed to marry a very strong intelligent, stable black woman and get elected President of the United States.  That takes more than luck.  Obviously, he has the smarts to learn how to play the game right and attract the right mentors/supporters.

Obama can't expect his luck to last forever, nor can his mistakes be hidden for all time.

The recent scandals are chipping away at Obama's popularity ratings.

Quinnipiac also shows that the confluence of three scandals (the two listed above and Benghazi) are starting to collectively erode the President's approval rating. At the beginning of May, Obama enjoyed a 48% approval rating with 45% disapproving. A month later he is upside down at 45% - 49%.

I doubt if his ratings will go much further down, because there's a strong element of "worship" in many of his supporters.

What's interesting is that many Democrats, Obama voters, are upset at the revelations, but they just can't blame Obama.

While President Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, faces a possible perjury charge and increased calls for his resignation over the Justice Department's outrageous spying on the media -- elsewhere, another scandal is taking another kind of toll. A new Quinnpiac poll shows that the public is far from satisfied that the IRS matter is settled. A full 76% want a special prosecutor named; that includes 63% of Democrats.

At the recreation of the Truman

Oval Office at the Truman Library

 in 1959, the former President Truman

poses by his old desk which  has

the famous "The Buck Stops Here"

 sign.

Americans on the whole don't see it as a "the buck stops here" issue.  The media loved to call Ronald Reagan the "Teflon president," but Obama is the real one.  It used to bother the Leftist media that people loved and believed Reagan.  They worked hard to chip away at that support.

In America there are voices protesting Obama, such as Charles Krauthammer, who believes that the Obama scandals are worse than most people think.

“I think there is a bigger story here, here’s the one that will in time come out,” Krauthammer said.  ”The biggest scandal of all, the biggest question is: What was the president doing in those eight hours?”

“He had a routine meeting at five o’clock. He never after, during the eight hours when our guys have their lives in danger, he never called the Secretary of Defense, he never calls the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he never calls the CIA Director,” Krauthammer continued. “Who does he call? About five hours in he calls the Secretary of State. And after the phone call she releases a statement essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance. It looks as if the only phone call was to construct a cover story at a time when the last two Americans who died were still alive and fighting for their lives. There’s the scandal and that has to be uncovered.”

Considering the power and influence the Obama White House has over the world, there's lots to worry about.

Lucky Obama. What if the Benghazi Leaks Had Hit The Fan Before Election Day?

The details about how United States President Barack Hussein Obama and his then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handled the Benghazi crises is just now getting big play in the media. 

Friday, in a bombshell report that blew the long-simmering Libya scandal wide open and right into the arms of the mainstream media, ABC's Jonathan Karl reported that an email written by Rhoades specifically mentioned the State Department's concerns about the CIA talking points. Here is how Karl transcribed the Rhoades' email:

We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.  We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.

Though this point wasn't the main focus of Karl's report, it was important because it showed that the White House was backing State in pushing inconvenient facts out of the talking points -- this included the fact that terrorists were behind the attack and that State had been negligent when it came to providing security for our diplomatic mission.
In the end, as we now all now know, and apparently due to the prodding of Hillary Clinton's right hand woman at State -- Victoria Nuland, the talking points ended up being completely wrong, which resulted in the American people being misled by the Obama Administration, straight through to a speech the President gave at the United Nations almost two weeks after the attack.

Do you think he would have been elected? 

The Benghazi terror attack was an issue in the campaign, but now it has been revealed that Obama had fudged his answers and statements about it.  Or should one say lied?  What's really clear and was clear all along to many was that the United States Government did reacted totally incorrectly.

And now, will this be the death of Hillary Clinton's last chance for the presidency?  Stay tuned...