Currently viewing the tag: “silent”
Since Japan's earthquake and following nuclear crisis, the CBS Evening News has done two reports on the Obama administration blocking use of the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada to safely dispose of U.S. nuclear waste. Meanwhile, NBC and ABC have ignored the controversy.
The first CBS report on the issue came on March 22, when Evening News anchor Katie Couric declared: "The crisis in Japan has renewed the debate over nuclear power in this country. Today a federal appeals court heard arguments in a lawsuit over what to do with spent fuel rods." Correspondent Jim Axelrod explained: "An estimated 66,000 metric tons of spent fuel are stored at 77 sites around the country. That's more than 145 million pounds….Plans to make Yucca Mountain in Nevada a long-term storage site were scuttled by the Obama administration a year ago, after 20 years of planning costing $ 14 billion."
In a follow-up piece on Thursday's Evening News, correspondent Armen Keteyian went further in laying blame on the Obama administration: "There was one site designed to hold all of our nation's nuclear waste and it's right here in the high desert of Nevada, at a place called Yucca Mountain. Today, the federal government won't let our cameras anywhere near it. It's shut down, locked up, caught up in what critics charge is nothing more than pure politics."
Fill-in anchor Erica Hill teased Keteyian's report at the top of the broadcast: "Why did plans to bury nuclear waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain get killed? Was it safety fears or politics?" Keteyian described how the, "Obama administration kept its campaign promise….And shut down Yucca Mountain. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must decide if it wants to restart what is already a 25-year, $ 14 billion project, in the face of tough opposition, like that from Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader from Nevada."
Keteyian also pointed out the political background of the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Obama: "A former staffer for Senator Reid, Greg Jaczko, now chairs the NRC. Jaczko recently came under fire after shutting down the agency's safety review of Yucca Mountain and after key safety recommendations were redacted, cut out, from a long-awaited NRC report."
In the March 22 report, Axelrod noted: "The head of the NRC may not see a pressing problem, but the states now suing did not want to take that risk before Japan's disaster and certainly don't want to now."
On Thursday, Keteyian challenged Jaczko: "Critics charge that you were simply doing the bidding of your former boss, Senator Harry Reid, a fierce opponent of this project."
Keteyian concluded his piece: "The NRC inspector general and Congress are now investigating the decision to shut down the safety review. Still, nuclear waste is scattered across 35 states, and Yucca Mountain sits silent and empty."
Here is a full transcript of Keteyian's March 31 report:
6:30PM ET TEASE:
ERICA HILL: Why did plans to bury nuclear waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain get killed? Was it safety fears or politics?
6:38PM ET TEASE:
HILL: And when we come back, it was supposed to store all of America's nuclear waste, so why then is this desert facility now deserted?
6:40PM ET SEGMENT:
HILL: For more than 50 years a debate has raged over where to store radioactive nuclear waste in this country. And that debate has been reignited by the crisis in Japan. The solution was supposed to be here at a place called Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the multibillion-dollar storage project has been shelved and as chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian explains, a congressional committee wants to find out why.
ARMEN KETEYIAN: Nuclear waste – the radioactive guest on the doorstep of many of America's most populous cities. Nearly 70,000 tons from 104 reactors often piling up within 50 miles from cities like New York, Chicago, and San Diego.
There was one site designed to hold all of our nation's nuclear waste and it's right here in the high desert of Nevada, at a place called Yucca Mountain. Today, the federal government won't let our cameras anywhere near it. It's shut down, locked up, caught up in what critics charge is nothing more than pure politics.
Gary Holis and Darrell Lacey are key officials in Nye County, Nevada. They want the waste at Yucca Mountain for the jobs and money it would bring.
DARRELL LACY [NYE COUNTY NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY PROJECT OFFICE]: The people in this area are all fairly comfortable with Yucca Mountain. Many of them have worked at Yucca Mountain.
KETEYIAN: Four previous presidents funded safety reviews of the project but last year the Obama administration kept its campaign promise.
CAMPAIGN AD: Barack Obama opposes opening Yucca.
KETEYIAN: And shut down Yucca Mountain. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must decide if it wants to restart what is already a 25-year, $ 14 billion project, in the face of tough opposition, like that from Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader from Nevada.
JEFFREY LEWIS [PH.D., NUCLEAR SAFETY EXPERT]: If the U.S. government wanted to do Yucca Mountain, it would have had to shove it down Harry Reid's throat.
KETEYIAN: A former staffer for Senator Reid, Greg Jaczko, now chairs the NRC. Jaczko recently came under fire after shutting down the agency's safety review of Yucca Mountain and after key safety recommendations were redacted, cut out, from a long-awaited NRC report. Three NRC staffers formally protested the decision to derail the safety review, charging it caused 'confusion, chaos, and anguish'. Today, Jaczko told us the safety report was preliminary, a draft, and that he had nothing to do with the redactions.
Critics charge that you were simply doing the bidding of your former boss, Senator Harry Reid, a fierce opponent of this project.
GREGORY JACZKO [PH.D., CHAIRMAN, U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: It was a difficult decision and – because it is such a controversial program – but, again, it was one that was made in, I believe, in the best interest of the agency.
KETEYIAN: The NRC inspector general and Congress are now investigating the decision to shut down the safety review. Still, nuclear waste is scattered across 35 states, and Yucca Mountain sits silent and empty. Armen Keteyian, CBS News, Nye County, Nevada.
— Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
My colleague Paula McMahon has this story today about Former Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson. You’ll see her in the video above.
Click here to read McMahon’s story.
A reporters goes through the email pile:
Gov. Scott Walker was right: The angry crowds in Madison didn’t tell the whole story of how Wisconsinites felt.
In the week after Walker announced his plan to dramatically curtail public employees’ collective bargaining rights in the state budget repair bill, a wide majority of the emails to him expressed support, an analysis of those emails indicates.
But that support was significantly boosted by emails from pro-Walker senders from outside Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism analyzed a computer-generated random sample of 1,910 emails from the more than 50,000 that flooded Walker’s office in the week after he unveiled his plan on Feb. 11. Nearly all were related to the bill.
Palestine Press Agency quotes an Arab journalist organization, listing 25 journalists who were attacked by Hamas police during the “unity” rallies on March 15th in Gaza.
Some were stabbed, others were beaten, and many had their cameras confiscated.
The Western media has ignored this story. There is nothing about it in the Reporters Without Borders site. Israel’s Foreign Press Association did put out a statement.
In a related story, a new AWRAD survey shows that 61% of Gazans believe that they have no freedom of expression (as opposed to 28% of the West Bank Arabs.)
Of course, the far left apologists for Hamas who style themselves as liberals – the Mondoweiss crowd, the Jewish Voice for Peace, Richard Silverstein, Tikkun magazine, George Galloway, Free Gaza – are completely silent on Hamas abuses of freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to succeed retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R), marking the second time in as many weeks Lee has made an endorsement in a Senate primary outside of Utah.
Inside Lee’s home state, though, the rookie senator is staying quiet. Lee has vowed to remain neutral in his home state’s own Senate primary, in which Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) is having a tough time courting conservative support.
“Jeff Flake’s record on fiscal conservatism speaks for itself,” Lee said in a statement. “He was offering legislation to cut spending, end earmark abuse, and limit government long before the Tea Party movement became popular. His election to the Senate will extend and build upon the conservative legacy of Senator Kyl.”
One could read the Tea Party remark as a slap at Hatch, who has become remarkably more outspoken on conservative issues in light of a likely challenge from Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Hatch has ramped up his rhetoric in recent months, calling health care reform a “piece of crap” and a “dumb-ass program,” words that stand in stark contrast to his reputation.
As Chairman Peter King’s hearings on Radical Islam and Terrorism got under way, the Left was racheting up the rhetoric. Leftists were screaming “racism” at King. Democrat Congresswoman Jackie Speier from San Francisco, said of the hearings (SFGate):
“To pinpoint Muslims as if they’re the only category — it’s wrong, it’s discriminatory, it’s racist and inappropriate.”
The NAACP (via WaPo) are warning the hearings will foster :
stereotypes which incite further misunderstandings or even violence against those groups.
King has shot back (via CNN):
“I will not allow political correctness to obscure a real and dangerous threat to the safety and security of the citizens of the United States.”
Noticeably absent from the debate is America’s libertarian movement.
Cato, Reason, the Libertarian Party, the Ron Paulists, have all kept largely silent on King’s hearings.
The leftside of the libertarian movement is in a rough spot on the issue of Radical Islam. Left-libertarians support both a staunchly non-interventionist, often isolationist foreign policy stance. But, they also support civil liberties.
Within just the last few weeks. with the downfall of the Tunisian ruling government and Mubarak in Egypt, we have witnessed an increasing crack-down by Islamists on civil liberties.
A week after the Tunisian government fell, fundamentalist Muslims stormed the famed Medina Quarter of Tunis, and attempted to torch houses of prostitution, all the while screaming “Allahu Ahkbar.” (LibertarianRepublican).
Pro-defense libertarian and former NY Madam Kristin Davis commented to Breitbart on theTunisian brothel burnings:
This is what happens when one strata of society tries to impose their moral beliefs on others.
Based on my experience those trying to burn down houses of Prostitution by day are those patronizing the places after dark.
Radical Muslims have also slit the throats of Catholic priests, and demonstrated in front of Jewish synagogues in Tunis shouting anti-Jewish slogans.
Just two days ago, a group of about 200 Egyptian women demonstrated in downtown Cairo for women’s rights. They were harrassed, pushed, groped and jeered by bearded Muslim men.
In the immediate aftermath of Mubarak resigning, groups of Muslim Youth rampaged Cairo’s casino district. They threw molotov cocktails at least 4 different luxary hotels and casinos. One firebomb killed two casino workers, and injured scores of others. (LibertarianRepublican).
These incidents all conflict greatly with the libertarian agenda of human rights and civil liberties. Right libertarians recognize this. The pro-defense wing of the libertarian movement oppose Radical Islam, largely for fear of what Sharia Law means to the agenda of civil liberties; legalized gambling, prostitution, marijuana use, alcohol, women and gay rights.
Liberals care little for civil liberties, particularly on tough issues such as gambling, prostitution and prohibition.
However, their sometimes allies, left-libertarians still care greatly for the civil liberties agenda. Problem is for these left-libertarians, all too often, their opposition to war and foreign intervention, trumps their support for civil liberties.
The left-libertarians are smart enough to realize this. They understand their hypocrisy on the issue, and the consistency of their right-libertarian counterparts.
Thus the silence on the subject of Radical Islam among left-libertarians.
As Wisconsin prepares for the possibility of a massive legislative recall campaign from both sides, Democrats are touting their recall petition drive’s success — telling Greg Sargent that they’ve already collected 15 percent of the necessary signatures in all eight districts and they’ve exceeded their weekend goal of 10,000 signatures by 35 percent.
By contrast, Juston Johnson, a GOP operative who is helping the Wisconsin GOP coordinate the recall efforts tells POLITICO, "While the State Party is assisting the local grassroots organizations that are circulating petitions to recall the Democrat Senators hiding in Illinois, we’re respecting the wishes of the local organizers not to divulge their information."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private foundation, aims to help billions of people in developing countries. The goal of its Global Development Program is “increase opportunities for people in developing countries to overcome hunger and poverty.” Their Global Health Program “harnesses advances in science and technology to save lives in poor countries.”
I have been critical of their strategy before (see “Can the problems of the developing world be solved by ignoring global warming?“). And Bill Gates’ annual letter this year does nothing to increase confidence.
There is no mention of global warming or climate change at all. Indeed, the discussion of agriculture contains this rather naively Panglossian statement:
The near-term rise in food prices and the long-term increased demand for food will create opportunities for small farmers even in the poorest countries.
Seriously, Bill?
The near-term rise in food prices is pretty much an unmitigated disaster for the developing world — hence the food riots that inevitably accompany record-setting food prices (see my series on food insecurity). It’s hardly to be touted as an “opportunity.”
The Gates Foundation is certainly to be commended for doing more than almost anyone else to help address hunger in the near term and improve crop yields in the medium term. But that entire effort is doomed to fail if the nations of the world don’t make greenhouse gas mitigation as big a priority as food production and poverty reduction.
Using a “middle of the road” greenhouse gas emissions scenario, a study in Science found that for the more than 5 billion people who will be living in the tropics and subtropics by 2100, growing-season temperatures “will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006.” The authors conclude: “Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100.” And the authors don’t even consider the potentially more devastating impact from more extreme drought and Dust-Bowlification (See NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts by mid-century even on moderate emissions path) — let alone the combination of heat stress and water stress together. Much like the NCAAR analysis, a study led by NOAA scientists found that large parts of Southeast Asia, eastern South America, western Australia, Southern Africa and northern Africa would see rainfall reductions “comparable to those of the Dust Bowl era.” Worse, unlike the Dust Bowl, which lasted a decade or two, this climate change would be “largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.”
A study led by MIT economists found that “the median poor country’s income will be about 50 percent lower than it would be had there been no climate change.” And that was based on a 3-degree C warming by 2100, perhaps half the warming we are currently on track to reach.
And don’t expect rich countries to come to the rescue. In 2100, we’ll be dealing with the same catastrophes, as well as with over a billion environmental refugees fleeing flooded and uninhabitable lands.
I’m not saying Gates needs to make climate change his sole focus or even his primary focus. But to ignore it entirely is ridiculous. In an earlier letter from Bill and Melinda (that I can’t find on their website, but you can read here), they make Pollyanna, Pangloss and Paula Abdul seem like Henry Kissinger, Mr. Spock and Dr. House:
We’re so hopeful about the potential for rapid progress that we’ve decided the foundation will spend all its money in the next 100 years. In this century, our world has the opportunity to fulfill the great human promise that all lives have equal value.
Now you tell me what are the chances that the developing world won’t need as much if not considerably more help in 2100 than they do today if folks like Bill Gates (and the President) stay largely silent on the problem and don’t devote adequate efforts to moving the world in the direction of sharp greenhouse gas cuts?
Related Post:
- Bill Gates disses energy efficiency, renewables, and near-term climate action while embracing the magical thinking of Bjorn Lomborg (and George Bush)
- Bill Gates is wrong about “energy miracles”
- Bill Gates backs grossly misleading ad on clean energy R&D
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| Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ |
Of the labor-driven standoff in Wisconsin, President Obama denounced it as something that “seems more like an assault on unions.” He is using his political arm, Organizing for America, in the dispute. It’s quite unusual for a president to insert himself into a state budget issue. It’s more presidential to condemn a dictator slaughtering his people, which is what is occurring in Libya. But Obama is silent on that.
We have a hyper-partisan in office, not a leader.
Oh, don’t forget, Obama’s former pastor and onetime “spiritual advisor,” the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, visited the pariah state and its loony dictator, Muahamar Gaddafi, in 1984
Related post:
Obama tentacles all over Madison union protests
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wisconsin politics Obama Barack Obama organizing for america Jeremiah Wright
It really says something, when President Obama stays silent on the issue of Libya, because of “scheduling issues.”
Yet Sarah Palin, gives a great response about what’s going on in the region.
Last night the United Nations Security Council took up the issue of the massacre of Libyan citizens by the desperate dictator trying to cling to power Muammar Gaddafi, Qaddafi or Kadafi. Protesters are being shot at from military helicopters and/or fighter Jets on orders by this blight upon the world, who has spent a life time supporting terrorism or giving the orders for civilian murders himself. According to reports over 1,000 people have been killed by the despot over the past few days.
The end result of the Security Council deliberations was a press statement condemning the regime’s violence against civilians, the weakest option available to it (short of saying nothing). A “press statement,” which does not enter the council’s record but must be approved by all members, is the weakest action the U.N. Security Council can take. A stronger option is a “presidential statement,” which does become part of the council’s record and is signed by the council’s president. And the strongest action (what the group tried to pass against Israel last week) resolution, which can either be non-binding or legally binding.
But members of the Security Council, bent on fooling themselves called their “Press Statement” action a strong response to the crisis.
Brazilian ambassador Maria Luiza Viotti, who chairs the 15-member council this month, read the statement followiong hours of closed-door consultations, calling it “a strong message.”
British ambassador Mark Lyall Grant described it as “extremely strong,” and U.S. deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said the international community had condemned the violence “in one clear and unified voice.”
“We hope today’s Security Council action will help bring an immediate end to this unacceptable situation,” DiCarlo added.
Holy Cow. Just a few short days ago this same group was ready to issue the harshest possible message to Israel for allowing Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, but they offer the most tepid response possible to someone who ruthlessly killed 1,000 people in less than a week.
,
As disgusting as the Security Council’s action, it still beats the heck out of what President Obama has done. Which is absolutely nothing. A strange reaction when you consider that he was issuing almost daily statements telling US Ally Egypt’s President Mubarak to get out, and last Friday he would have voted for a UN security council resolution condemning another ally Israel if the word “illegal” was changed to “illegitimate.”
Qaddafi who has never been considered a strong US ally, and indeed at times has been considered an enemy, has gotten a free pass by the POTUS. Even worse, the liberal media, who should be pointing out the Presidential inconsistency is making lame excuses to give Obama cover.
For example the Washington Post claims the reason Obama is silent about Libya while he was all over Egypt is because we had a good relationship with Egypt and thus we had “leverage,” against our ally.
But current and former officials said that American appeals are likely to have little effect on Gaddafi, a mercurial autocrat who for decades was regarded as a nemesis of U.S. presidents.
Although the United States has been able to leverage its deep ties with Egypt’s armed forces, it has no significant military-to-military relationship with Libya. It also has little economic leverage: For the past fiscal year, U.S. aid to Libya has been less than $ 1 million, and most of that has gone toward helping the country’s disarmament program.
While WAPO is correct that we do not have leverage with this despotic regime, it does not mean the Obama shouldn’t make a statement. This is the United States, leader of the free world, our President has a moral obligation to clearly and publicly show his outrage.
Politico has come up with a list of four excuses for the President, the silliest of which is called Revolution Fatigue.
The main focus of the Obama administration – and the president’s only path to victory in 2012 – is an improving economy. Unlike George W. Bush, Obama’s isn’t pushing a freedom agenda or even a comprehensible vision of a democratized Middle East/North Africa. Anything that doesn’t have a direct impact on American jobs is considered mission drift, and it was no accident that Obama stayed mum on Libya during his all-day jobs-a-thon in Cleveland yesterday. Libya is no Egypt. If there’s an Obama Doctrine for the region, it’s this: Stay on the right side of the Arab street, but don’t make any commitments.
So what exactly are they saying? Obama is picking making nice to the Arab world over morality?
The Voice of America news service reprinted the WH Press Secretary’s lame excuse without asking questions:
As President Obama flew to Ohio for an event highlighting his economic policies, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Mr. Obama was not expected to make any additional statement for now.
Carney said the United States is working with other countries and participating in meetings at the United Nations, saying the international community can be most effective “when it speaks with one voice.”
Why didn’t they ask why it was OK for the POTUS to speak out about Mubarak?
The real fact is that since his inauguration, this President has taken the side of America’s enemies over our friends, just look how he bashed Honduras and Israel,how he has damaged relations with Britain, France and Germany.
Remember the first visit the the Obama White House by a British Prime Minister? Obama upset the entire country of Great Britain by dissing their PM; no state dinner, no press conference and to top it all off President Obama gave the Prime Minister a crappy take-home gift, old DVDs that won’t work on British players. But he has bowed to despots such as the King of Saudi Arabia, and treated with “kid gloves” tryrants such as Chavez and Qaddafi.
Though it all, the leftist media has given the President cover, and has even acted incredulous when people suggest that Obama’s foreign policy has been disappointing. Take for example this interview of Donald Rumsfeld by CNN’s Candy Crowley.
Since January 2009 the United States foreign policy has been operating without a moral fiber. President Obama has been supporting despots and “dissing” our allies. And the worst part of it all, the mainstream media has not been questioning his actions, but providing him with excuses. A press that refuses to seek the truth is totally useless, sadly that’s what we have been saddled with.
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“We believe that the government of Libya bears responsibility for what is occurring.”
Bill Kristol is disgusted at both the vacuity of Hillary’s pro forma denunciation and The One’s deafening silence. I wish I could join him on the latter, but I keep coming back to those two weeks of White House bumbling on Egypt. What reason is there to believe that anyone in Libya would care what […]
Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson was, in his way, the Scott Walker of the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of a cadre of young Republican governors who overturned a longstanding status quo and whose policy innovations — welfare reform first of all — transformed the nation.
In an interview today, Thompson praised Walker and described him as a successor to Thompson’s generation of governors — but stopped short of endorsing his proposals to structurally weaken public sector unions.
"Governor Walker is following along in the lines of being a very strong innovator," Thompson said, noting that Wisconsin had pioneered everything from the progressive income tax to workers compensation to welfare reform, which produced protests but "a smaller volcano" than the one in Madison today. "He believes — and I think rightly — that he only way to solve this [budget] problem is to make some dramatic changes early on in his administration, so he can rebuild the base and open the doors for jobs."
Thompson, who said he talks to Walker, said he’d never heard Waker "beat up on the unions" and noted that he himself "had good labor relations."
The public sector unions’ power "didn’t bother me that much," Thompson said. "But that’s a different time and different fiscal conditions and the governor is looking at things as they are today."
I asked Thompson directly if he supports the specific rollback of labor power that Walker has proposed.
"That’s a question you’re going to have to ask the governor," he said. "I’m not privy to the inside information as to why he made that decision. He must have a basis for it."
Thompson also recalled his own generation of Republican governors in the Midwest.
"The governors like Engler and Leavitt and Branstad and Ridge and Arne and myself, we were on the cutting edge of a lot of things back then," he said. "It takes the governors to change the federal direction, and I think it was shown in many areas in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I think governors after that just stopped…. From ’95 until now the governors were more acquiescent to the Federal Government."
"Now you see a new breed of governors saying, ‘We are the laboratory of democracy,’ and you see it across the country – and I think that’s fantastic," he said.
In the wake of Tucson, we’re all supposed to be employing a New Tone. In fact, failure to do so is considered grounds for being hounded off the air, at least that’s the standard the shills at Media Matters have applied to Glenn Beck.
But I guess George Soros decided to scrap all that “new tone” business. Yesterday he appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show and promptly made a comparison between Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch and the Nazis taking over in the wake of the Weimar Republic:
To truly understand how surprising this is you need to know that Media Matters, which Soros supports financially, has been on a two year crusade to have Glenn Beck removed from television. In the last two-four months, a big part of their strategy has been to attack Beck for his use of Nazi references (you can find the mother-lode of oppo-research here). They’ve written dozens of dispatches on this subject, some contain penetrating questions like this:
[D]oes this mean that Beck really thinks that this is a defensible part of the reasonable discourse in this country given that Nazi tactics include detention and execution of political opponents, use of paramilitary force, banning other political parties, and of course the systematic genocide of Jews.
I suppose it’s a fair question. So now that Media Matters’ #1 fan and largest individual donor has done the same thing on national television, what do they have to say about it?
[crickets]
They posted video of Soros’ comments here without transcript or comment. Note that the headline doesn’t mention that Soros broke Godwin’s Law in the clip. I guess this way they can claim they posted it, even though they buried the lede.
And that’s how it goes at Media Matters. When Beck mentions the Weimar Republic, it’s a reason to go after his advertisers. When Media Matters’ own patron does it, it’s not even mentioned. Media Matters doesn’t give a damn about civility or Nazi references in politics. They care about one thing: discrediting the right by any means necessary. I hope reporters who still frequently rely on them for stories and research are starting to realize they are being used by a group of partisan hacks who put ideology first and principle last.
I admit, there’s something about President Obama I don’t understand here.
When it comes to protests labeled pro-democracy in Egypt, President Obama had no problem supporting them, cutting the legs out from under a leader who was a long time US ally and calling publicly for the Egyptian regime to step down.
Today, the pro-democracy protests hit Iran and the Khamenei regime responded with tear gas, brutal repression and live ammunition…and just like in 2009, there’s not a peep out of the president. Just a few pro-forma remarks out of Secretary of State Clinton, whom nobody takes seriously anyway.
If you recall, the same thing’s true in Latin America. When the people of Honduras impeached a would-be dictator, the President practically declared war on one of our best friends in the region. But when it comes to Hugo Chavez and his repression of liberty in Venezuela, President Obama can’t even muster up so much as a stern voice of disapproval.
I wonder…when it comes to foreign policy, are we witnessing the birth of a new Obama Doctrine to actively seek regime change among our allies but not our enemies?
If nothing else, the President has proven one thing…with him in charge, we’re dangerous as friends and downright laughable as enemies.
