I never thought I would say this, but can we keep Obummer?
"Gates says Obama lost faith in Afghan moves; Memoir details president’s doubts on Petraeus, Karzai" by Thom Shanker | New York Times, January 08, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama eventually lost faith in the troop increase he ordered in Afghanistan, his doubts fed by top White House civilian advisers opposed to the strategy who continually brought him negative news reports suggesting it was failing, according to his former defense secretary, Robert M. Gates.
In a new memoir, Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration who served for two years under Obama, praises the president as a rigorous thinker who frequently made decisions “opposed by his political advisers or that would be unpopular with his fellow Democrats.” But Gates says that by 2011, Obama began expressing his own criticism of the way his strategy in Afghanistan was playing out.
At a pivotal meeting in the situation room in March 2011, Gates said, Obama opened with a blast of frustration over his Afghan policy — expressing doubts about General David H. Petraeus, the commander he had chosen, and questioning whether he could do business with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Sometimes I do wonder if there is a JFK-like scenario behind the veneer and curtain of the propaganda pre$$, and it may not even matter. JFK was targeted by anticommunists and Cubans (among others) for positions he largely didn't have; it was the impression they were getting and it doesn't matter if JFK was doing or would have done such things or not, it is the perception of the plotters that is the key thing. What do they think.
As for now, we know Israel doesn't particularly care for this president despite the unending aid checks -- maybe he could NOT USE the PEN there, huh? -- and public fawning over them.
“Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” is the first book describing those years written from inside the Cabinet. Gates offers more than 600 pages of detailed history of his personal wars with Congress, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and, in particular, Obama’s White House staff over the 4½ years he sought to salvage victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, [written by] a former CIA director who served for eight presidents….
Yeah, this guy was up to his neck in Iran-Contra, missed the Soviet collapse, was embroiled in the BCCI and October Surprise scandals, and is privy to tons of other compromising s*** on the elite scum running our society. He's a Bush buddy fed cry in' out loud! Doesn't that tell you something?
Gates calls Vice President Joe Biden a man of integrity, but questions the vice president’s judgment.
“I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates wrote.
Biden voted in favor of force in Iraq, and so did Hitlery (but when you consider the Gates closeness with the Bush family and the Clinton connection to Iran-Contra at Mena, the familiarity between them all makes an incestuous sort of sense).
Heck, Bush Sr. has practically adopted Bill Clinton as the son he never had -- and here Gates is goosing Hillary's presidential bid.
“I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House’s lack of appreciation — from the top down — of the uncertainties and unpredictability of war,” in September 2009, he recalls. “I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it.”
Who cares at this point?
Gates is a bipartisan critic of the two presidents he served as defense secretary, George W. Bush and Obama.
He holds the Bush administration responsible for misguided policy that squandered the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, although he credits Bush for ordering a troop surge in Iraq that contributed to averting collapse of the mission.
What does he think is happening over there now, and he didn't like the Jewish neo-con plan for world domination?
And he notes that only he and Bush’s second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, pressed forcefully to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with little result.
Place is open even now, and that doesn't excuse Condi the war criminal, sorry.
Gates did not spare himself from criticism, going beyond the typical political autobiography designed to sell as a kiss-and-tell narrative or to burnish a questionable legacy.
Meaning this trash is all credible?
He describes how he came to feel “an overwhelming sense of personal responsibility” for the troops he ordered into combat, which left him misty-eyed when discussing their sacrifices — and perhaps clouded his judgment when coldhearted national security interests were at stake.
In opposing military action in Libya, for example, he told participants in a White House meeting that the United States should end its current wars before sending US men and women in uniform off to start a new one. He was overruled.
Yeah, Obummer can never blame Libya on Bush.
That one is all his. He owns it.
He initially opposed sending Special Operations forces to attack a housing compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was believed to be hiding.
Not only did they lie about 9/11, they lied about that assassination. Between that and the staged and scripted hoaxes -- complete with fake video -- has me not believing what I see in my propaganda pre$$ or on my ma$$ jew$media. Sorry.
Gates wrote that Obama’s approval for the Navy SEAL mission, despite strong doubts that bin Laden was there, was “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”
He has especially high praise for Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And he says Biden has been wrong about everything for decades. I think we just got our first endorsement of the 2016 campaign!
But stinging assessments were aimed at Capitol Hill. In private, members of Congress could be calm, thoughtful, and insightful.
“But when they went into an open hearing, and the little red light went on atop a television camera, it had the effect of a full moon on a werewolf,” he added.
And he is no less critical of the institution he managed. The military services were too focused on protecting their own budgets and future missions, and he describes how he had to break traditional procurement chains to rush armored vehicles to troops to protect them from improvised explosives, additional helicopters to evacuate the wounded, and more drones for surveillance.
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It got bad reviews:
White House challenges defense secretary’s memoir
Obama’s generals
‘Duty’ by Robert M. Gates
Getting good reviews:
"Super PAC ramps up for Clinton; Obama political veterans play key roles in group" by Nicholas Confessore | New York Times, January 24, 2014
The largest liberal super political action committee in the country has begun raising money to elect Hillary Rodham Clinton president, formally aligning itself with Clinton’s undeclared presidential ambitions more than two years away from the election.
The group, Priorities USA Action, which played a pivotal role in helping reelect President Obama, also named new directors to steer the organization, appointments that will both cement the group’s pro-Clinton tilt and thrust veterans of Obama’s political and fund-raising operation into the center of the post-Obama Democratic Party.
Should have seen coming.
The move marks perhaps the earliest-ever start to big-dollar fund-raising in support of a nonincumbent presidential candidate, providing a fund-raising portal for wealthy Clinton supporters eager to help her White House prospects — and to the legions of others eager to ingratiate themselves with Clinton and her inner circle.
Six years after overwhelming Clinton with a superior grasp of small-donor fund-raising and grass-roots organizing, the Obama world is now conferring on her some of the fruits of Obama’s successful reelection: data analytics expertise, new voter targeting techniques, and experienced hands knitting it all together.
Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, who has forged close ties with many Democratic donors, will serve as cochairman of the revamped super PAC and an affiliated nonprofit, along with Jennifer M. Granholm, the former governor of Michigan who is among the most persistent voices calling for Clinton to enter the 2016 race.
Unlike other pro-Clinton organizations, which have focused on recruiting small donors or building lists of grass-roots supporters, Priorities is seeking six- and seven-figure checks to power major advertising expenditures in support of Clinton — including, if necessary, responses to attacks by Republicans and conservatives in advance of a formal campaign declaration.
Meaning big money will be backing here like they backed Obummer.
Like all super PACs, the group would be barred from coordinating spending and strategy with Clinton if she entered the presidential race.
“I think the numbers clearly show that she’s the strongest presidential candidate on the Democratic side,” Messina said in an interview. “And Priorities is going to be there for her if she decides to run.”
Messina is now the most high-profile member of Obama’s inner circle to openly back Clinton for president, a move that can only fuel perceptions that Clinton’s potential candidacy has the tacit endorsement of Obama himself.
Messina’s role also adds to the Priorities USA team a top-tier rainmaker, with close relationships to the donors and bundlers who powered Obama’s billion-dollar campaign effort.
Raining more than pennies from heaven.
Messina said he would focus on importing to Priorities some of the advances in television microtargeting developed by the Obama campaign in 2012, which allowed it to achieve an unprecedented level of precision and cost-efficiency in finding and reaching voters, out-hustling big-spending groups on the right.
Meaning the rig is in the works.
Messina will join other Obama and Clinton veterans at the group, including Buffy Wicks, a former Obama field director now serving as Priorities’ executive director.
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Looks like Clinton is rigging the election and getting rid of challengers. Frightening thought it is, her as president.
So who is going to be the sacrificial lamb the Republicans serve up?
"GOP shortens timeframe for nomination" by Steve Peoples | Associated Press, January 25, 2014
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders overwhelmingly voted Friday to shorten their presidential selection process in an attempt to minimize damage from GOP candidates attacking each other as part of a larger plan that could significantly reshape the 2016 presidential election.
The vote came as the Republican National Committee works to create an easier path to the White House for its next nominee roughly a year before campaigning begins in earnest for the next presidential contest. While President Obama’s second term began just one year ago, prospective Republican candidates already have begun visiting states like Iowa and New Hampshire that hold outsized influence because of their early positions on the primary calendar.
New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada are scheduled to host the first four contests in February 2016 under the new schedule, while the remainder of the nation’s 46 states and territories would vote between early March and mid-May. The party’s national convention is expected in late June or early July, roughly two months sooner than has become the norm….
Committee members also began considering the location of its 2016 convention.
Representatives from four contending cities — Las Vegas, Denver, Kansas City, Mo., and Columbus, Ohio — offered gifts and parties to help secure an advantage. Las Vegas’ bid, fueled in part by Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, gave GOP officials complimentary wireless Internet access and goodie bags with fleece jackets and leather binders….
Who really cares who the nominee is anymore or where they have the elite shindig?
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Related: Clash of ideas on display as GOP plans its future
"Fewer than half of adult Latino citizens voted in the 2012 presidential elections, according to the US Census, and that has prompted two national Latino organizations to step up voter registration efforts this year, months ahead of the 2014 elections. Clarissa Martinez De Castro, who heads up the ational Council of La Raza and Mi Familia Vota Education Fund’s immigration and civic engagement campaigns, said the potential for Congress to take up immigration reform creates an additional emotional, as well as practical, incentive to vote."
Looks like Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida and California are all going to go blue in 2016.
The candidates:
Dahill Drunk With Power
That should stop Chris Christie from driving to the oval office.
McDonnell's Mischief
Not much, but…. so who does that leave?
"Huckabee targets contraceptives" Associated Press, January 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told fellow Republicans on Thursday that rival Democrats were trying to win over female voters by promising them birth control and telling them they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.
See: State of the Union Set the Tone For 2014 Elections
Good job, Huck!
Huckabee made the comment as he was making a pitch that the GOP needs to broaden its appeal and end its internal divisiveness.
Huckabee, a favorite of Christian conservatives and a Fox News personality, told the Republican Party’s leaders and activists that purity tests within the party only shrink the ranks. His speech about expanding the appeal of the GOP, designed to whet the 168-member Republican National Committee’s appetite for a Huckabee 2016 campaign, won a quick rebuke from the White House over contraception.
Going to be an all Arkansas campaign?
Asked about Huckabee’s comments, press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at the White House that it ‘‘sounds offensive to me and to women.’’
In private meetings and public speeches Huckabee has been offering a prescription for Republicans to expand their reach after losing the 2008 and 2012 presidential contests.
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Let the games begin!
