Posted on 04/19/2014 5:48:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards on his foreign and domestic policies lately.
Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch.
If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy.
She expressed grave concern that the economy's 6.7 percent unemployment rate was still significantly above the jobless level the Fed considers normal.
While Yellen was voicing some anguish over the large number of long-term unemployed and those who can find only low-paying, part-time work, Obama was campaigning in Oakdale, Penn., dishing out job-training grants at a local community college.
Obama has been spending tens of billions of dollars on a wasteful, duplicative maze of job-training programs that do nothing to create new jobs.
That would require much stronger economic growth, but under his anti-job policies, growth has been painfully slow, less than 2 percent last year, and job creation remains anemic.
More recently, the president has turned to several of his party's threadbare fallback positions -- including raising the minimum wage to $10.10. The Congressional Budget Office slapped down his idea, saying that it would destroy at least 500,000 primarily low-wage jobs and possibly as many as 1 million.
Instead of talking about incentives to boost job-creating capital investment and business expansion, Obama and the Democrats talk only about fairness, gender equality, employer health care mandates, and making businesses and wealthier people pay "their fair share."
With his party facing its toughest election challenges in years, "and burdened with persistently high unemployment, Obama is playing the race, gender and class cards. Fabricating fear and injustice, such tactics keep the economy in slow gear and make worse the very people the president professes to help," says University of Maryland business economist Peter Morici.
The lackluster economy and his unpopular Obamacare law will be the overriding political issues in the November elections.
But Obama's failures extend across the foreign policy landscape, too. And some of the criticism is coming from the liberal news media.
In a front-page story Thursday, The Washington Post took the president to task for his failed policy, announced three years ago, to refocus U.S. attention on Asia, which his advisers said would become a pillar of his foreign policy.
"The result, as Obama prepares to travel to the region next week, has been a loss of confidence among some U.S. allies about the administration's commitment at a time of escalating regional tensions," Post correspondent David Nakamura said in a devastating critique of Obama's Asian policy.
"Relations between Japan and South Korea are at one of the lowest points since World War II, and China has provoked both with aggressive actions at sea despite a personal plea from Vice President Biden in December," he reported.
Even the Asian policy's original architects were harshly criticizing the administration's handling of it.
"Relations have gone from being generally positive at the strategic level among the great powers to extremely difficult," says Kurt M. Campbell, a former assistant secretary of state who helped develop the pivot strategy toward Asia.
Under this administration, it has become "a much more challenging strategic landscape," Campbell said.
Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rolled out the policy in 2011, announcing that the new U.S. strategy would turn away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and shift attention to China's growing dominance.
But their "pivot" strategy has since turned into a series of stumbles in the past year, with one crisis after another in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and in Asia.
Obama's long-delayed strategic plan to negotiate a 12-nation Pacific free trade agreement -- an effort to reassert U.S. influence in the heart of Asia as a counterbalance to China's rise -- was blocked by congressional Democrats. Such is the power of anti-trade labor union bosses in the Democratic Party.
The Post noted ominously that the stakes for the failed Asia pivot were "perhaps as high for Clinton" -- who, by the way, was given the job of secretary of state despite little or no experience in foreign affairs.
"As she weighs a White House bid in 2016, her supporters have cited the Asia strategy as one of her most significant accomplishments," Nakamura writes.
A quick look around the world shows the rest of Obama's foreign policies are in shambles.
A militarily aggressive Russia, under Vladimir Putin's dream of rebuilding the old Soviet Union, has seized the Crimea peninsula and is now plotting to seize Eastern Ukraine, too.
Many observers think the Baltic states will be his next target, as he tests the West's resolve, while Obama talks only of stepping up economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts.
In the Middle East, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, armed to the teeth by Putin, has for many months been escalating his saturation bombing assault on rebel-held towns, killing thousands of innocent civilians -- with hardly a peep from the White House.
There are growing reports of hundreds of rebels turning over their weapons to the Assad government, weakening the resolve of the rebellion.
Elsewhere, the Taliban is stepping up its lethal attacks in Afghanistan's central cities, and terrorist bombings are tearing Iraq apart. In Pakistan, the Taliban just announced Wednesday that it was ending its cease-fire.
In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence has been picking up growing threats from al-Qaida cells across the region. It is obvious that Obama's claims in his 2012 campaign that he had al-Qaida "on the run" were untrue.
When everything about you is founded on lies and false premises its just a matter of time before the whole house of cards caves in. The question of relevance is,”How many will it hurt in the process?”With this guy it may, like Hitler, affect millions.
Ever since that movie, “Floundering” and “foundering” have come to mean the same thing! A Flounder” IS A FISH, DARN IT! THIS is what “foundering means;
“foun·der2 [foun-der] Show IPA
verb (used without object)
1.
(of a ship, boat, etc.) to fill with water and sink.
2.
to fall or sink down, as buildings, ground, etc.: Built on a former lake bed, the building has foundered nearly ten feet.
3.
to become wrecked; fail utterly: The project foundered because public support was lacking.
4.
to stumble, break down, or go lame, as a horse: His mount foundered on the rocky path.”
As an old sailor, this ticks me off!
They said Flounder and just wanted to make fun of them for the commentary, for Bammy and the use of the word.
Mission accomplished...feeling HOPELESS
‘flounder’ as a verb [to struggle; to move with difficulty] has been in use since the late 1500s.
Ooh boy, he really has the features of an Indonesian sultan.
Note: a flounder is a fish, one sided it’s true.
To founder is to fill with water and sink, usually a ship.
Sorry, just one of those things that get me.
Thanks.
Here is some more supporting evidence to your premise which I just ran across when starting my computer:
http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-speech-michelle-obama-draws-complaints-144546090.html
KANSA SPEECH - MICHELLE OBAMA DRAWS COMPLAINTS
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — If expanding the guest list to include Michelle Obama at graduation for high school students in the Kansas capital city means fewer seats for friends and family, some students and their parents would prefer the first lady not attend.
A furor over what the Topeka school district considers an honor has erupted after plans were announced for Obama to address a combined graduation ceremony for five area high schools next month an 8,000-seat arena. For some, it was the prospect of a tight limit on the number of seats allotted to each graduate. For others, it was the notion that Obama’s speech, tied to the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing segregation in schools, would overshadow the student’s big day.
“I’m a single mother who has raised him for 18 years by myself,” said Tina Hernandez, parent of Topeka High School senior Dauby Knight. “I’ve told him education is the only way out. This is one of the biggest days of their lives. They’ve taken the glory and shine from the children and put on Mrs. Obama. She doesn’t know our kids.”
Hernandez was among the parents and students who spoke Thursday at a school board meeting and urged district officials to reconsider their decision to invite Obama. Ron Harbaugh, spokesman for the Topeka school district, said Friday discussions were under way to work out the logistics and planning for the event, including how many tickets each family would be allotted.
“We will have a clearer picture of what’s going on,” Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh said officials asked the president or first lady to speak at graduation as a tie-in with the anniversary of the Brown decision, which outlawed school segregation. The district plans to place a priority on seating students and their families, and could broadcast the event to an overflow room at a hotel adjacent to the graduation arena for those unable to find a seat inside.
That’s not good enough for Taylor Gifford, 18, who started an online petition...
Just wait until Billary 2.0 extends the carnage for another 8 years.
“She expressed grave concern that the economy’s 6.7 percent unemployment rate was still significantly above the jobless level the Fed considers normal. “
Especially since it’s really north of 15%.
I've actually had someone in a meeting "gently" correct me when I used foundering. Of course, he was someone who loved to say irregardless.
6.7% my big ol’ hairy butt, unemployment is probably twice that if we were getting an honest number......The TRUE number is very close to 32%.
There's a reason that they call it the "Stupid Party."
There is not as much difference in these two words as you might think. Have you ever been “floundering” fishing for flounder? They can be caught on a hook and line but “floundering” also means wandering around in shallow water, at night with a lantern and a stick with a sharp point on it and sticking it into a flounder who is sleeping. This kind of “fishing” can go bad and you find that you are foundering in an unknown place in deep d..d...
(been there done that)
Obama may be foundering but he is also floundering.
The OED offers “flounder” as a verb going back to the 16th Century: “expressing impetuous or clumsy movements...to flop about”.
A 1592 citing is: “My foot did slide...and Flundering, almost flat on earth I go”; from 1735, “Another in the treach’rous Bog Lies flound’ring”; from 1834, “He lost his balance, and man and fish lay together floundering in the rapid”.
Seems likely the movements and actions of the flounder-fish were applied descriptively to other creatures and situations, in verb form—much as we also say someone “snaked” through tall grass, etc.
“...Obama’s Presidency Is Floundering...”
Nonsense.
It’s all George Bush’s, the Republicans’, the Tea Party’s and evil, mean, knuckle-dragging, gun-loving, bible-thumping, Christian white males’ fault.
See? Ya know?
(That’s the way the Progressives will spin it, in one way or another.)
IMHO
When was it ever not floundering. The country is a disaster.
Nothing matters. After 8 yrs of shitlery we’re DONE!
Yep. Bill Clinton: First American Reich
Barack Obama Obama: Second American Reich
Hillary Clinton: Third American Reich.
Damn them, I hope they can be stopped...
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