Free Republic

The internet was abuzz following a story by David Samuels on the jerk who admitted he manipulated the truth to get the president’s absurd deal with Iran accepted (accepted, that is, by the Democrats in Congress who blocked a Republican resolution to reject it). In case you missed it I’ll provide a quick summary of the salient parts, but that shouldn’t be the end of the story: the press having allowed itself to be flimflammed into being mere White House megaphones needs to redeem itself, should it care to win back even the tiniest shred of credibility. It probably won’t,...

In light of Ben Rhodes' revelation over the weekend that he led a White House effort to lie about the Iranian nuclear deal, it is useful to look back at last summer, when the White House attacked the Associated Press and its diplomatic reporter, @APDiplowriter (Matt Lee) for asking too many questions about the deal, particularly about the side agreement that allows the Iranians to 'self-inspect' their weapons production facility at Parchin. What this story is really about is the politicization of expertise, and how far things can go when one group of experts (arms controllers) decides to fight...

It’s hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a "mind meld" with his boss, the president. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the website, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of "the American foreign-policy establishment." What Obama calls the "Washington playbook" dictating the sorts of responses available to American policymakers, Rhodes calls the "Blob." Blob includes "editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker," etc. It also encompasses, according to Rhodes, Obama's former secretary of state Hillary Clinton,...

Ben Rhodes is perhaps the weirdest foreign policy adviser in the history of the White House. His path to his current position as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications was, as this New York Times profile informs us, "perhaps not strictly believable, even as fiction." Forget his title. Ben Rhodes is "the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself," according to the Times. What makes that so bizarre is that Rhodes has no background in foreign policy at all. He was a failed short story writer who wandered into the orbit of Obama aides...

When it comes to foreign policy, President Obama has spent more than seven years now living the dream. And I mean dream, as in fantasy -- a trip to an alternate universe. Never mind the dangerous and in some cases deadly realities that increasingly beset the rest of the planet. For the White House, it's been one glorious fiction after another. Russia was a "reset." Libya was a success. So was the pivot to Asia. The tide of war is receding. There was a red line in Syria (until there wasn't). The Iran nuclear program is now "exclusively peaceful." America's...

<p>The profile of one Ben Rhodes running in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is not unsympathetic, which makes it all the more devastating.</p> <p>But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob."</p>

The Obama administration misled Americans about supposed "moderates" that officials were dealing with in the Iranian theocracy to forge a nuclear proliferation deal — all to make the deal more palatable to the American public, according to The New York Times. {snip}... "We created an echo chamber," he tells the Times in a piece to appear in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper. "They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say," he adds about so-called experts praising the deal in the press. According to the Times, when Rhodes was asked about his misleading version of...

Deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes orchestrated an 'echo chamber' of media support for Obama's Iran deal He spoke candidly about his tactics to a New York Times Magazine writer Tactics included planting talking points with compliant reporters Also helped arms-control experts land in influential positions where they could parrot the White House's line on the deal's virtues Even then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says he's not sure the president's aims were what the White House said they were at the time White House routinely 'ventriloquizes' reporters, the Times story explains The Obama White House set up...

We hope Sens. Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand are giving that devastating new profile of resident Obama’s foreign-policy guru a careful read. Because they’ll learn how they were all played for fools on the Iran nuclear deal by that aide, Ben Rhodes — and the resident. That applies especially to Schumer, who will be the Senate Democratic leader come January. Booker and Gillibrand hewed to the party line in backing the deal. Schumer gave it a thumb’s-down — but then refused to lobby his colleagues to take his side. Sen. Bob Menendez, on the other hand, is looking...

In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality. One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor. Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just "ask" for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually...

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

I just added 15 new items to my list of Obama’s lies, lawbreaking, etc.  Items 1 through 500 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/Items 501 through 1,000 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/obama-part-2/Items 1,001 through 1,202 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/obama-part-3/Here are the new entries:1,188) “Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says”In January 2016, the Washington Post reported:Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report saysThe Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers…The Office of...

The Israel Project's Omri Ceren sent around an email this afternoon reporting that Congress is looking into whether Obama administration officials lied to Congress in their testimony about the Iran deal last summer, or whether they have just totally bowed to Iran. Last week reporters confirmed that the Obama administration has reversed itself on a number of commitments made to Congress during last summer's push to get support for the Iran deal. Specifically the AP confirmed that the administration intends to give Iran indirect access the U.S. financial system and Reuters confirmed that Washington is no longer labeling Iranian...

Here are eight more reasons I’m sooo glad I didn’t vote for Obama  Items 1 through 500 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/Items 501 through 1,000 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/obama-part-2/Items 1,001 through 1,187 can be found at https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/obama-part-3/Here are the new entries:1,180) There were three major differences between Obama’s “Operation Fast and Furious” and Bush’s “Operation Wide Receiver”Bush and Obama each had a program where the U.S. government put guns into the hands of Mexican criminals. Bush’s program was called “Operation Wide Receiver,” and Obama’s program was called “Operation Fast and Furious.” However, there were three major differences between the two...

Last year, Kulanu MK and former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren received heavy criticism in some circles for his book Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. With the release of the book’s Hebrew edition, Oren spoke to Arutz Sheva, discussing in depth the tensions between Israel and the Obama administration and the push back he received for the English edition. The book, which created controversy for what some considered an unfair portrayal of President Barack Obama, elicited rare public condemnations from senior officials, including former US special envoy to the Middle Easy Martin Indyk. “When I wrote...

Hillary Clinton has a problem. She’s not a very good candidate. She doesn’t inspire the kind of wild, stand-in-the-sun-for-hours enthusiasm that President Obama did. There is no one passing out at her rallies. She’s raising less money than her challenger Bernie Sanders. She is winning delegates but few people seem to be swooning over her carefully crafted persona.Fortunately for Hillary, she has an ally willing to help her make it to the White House. The New York Times reports President Obama, speaking privately to big donors in Houston, Texas, asked them to stop flirting with Bernie Sanders and line...

Americans sensed there was still a bit of tension between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the latter leader cancelled their planned meeting this month. The Obama administration claimed to be blindsided by the announcement, but Israel’s government insists they warned the White House last week. Sources reveal that the prime minister decided to forgo the meeting because he was frustrated over a delay in defense aid. Yet, others say he simply didn’t want to visit during the peak of the U.S. presidential campaign. The bad blood between Obama and Netanyahu dates back a few years ago...

Obama points finger at Britain, France over Libya chaos Published March 11, 2016 FoxNews.com President Barack Obama has strongly criticized the leaders of Great Britain and France for their policy toward Libya after the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Qaddafi, saying that he was mistaken to believe the U.S.' European allies would be "more invested in the follow-up" to Qaddafi's fall. Obama made the remarks in an interview with The Atlantic magazine. The criticisms of British Prime Minister David Cameron, in particular, are some of the strongest of a sitting U.K. leader by a sitting president. In the interview, Obama...

Hi, I'm proud to be a Democrat. We believe in moving forward, not backward. We trust scientists when they tell us climate change is real. We trust women to make their own health care decisions. We're the party that champions equality, that fights injustice, and that stands up and speaks out for every voice, no matter how small. I couldn't be prouder to have led this party and this country through seven years of progress -- progress like 20 million Americans gaining health insurance, marriage equality in all 50 states, the unemployment rate cut in half, and more of our...

National Public Radio collaborated with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to survey Americans’ recent experience with health care. As to the Affordable Care Act, the survey’s findings are damning. They suggest that Obamacare has been worse than a complete waste of money. This is the survey’s only question directly on Obamacare. Most respondents say that Obamacare hasn’t affected them; where it has affected them, most say the law’s impact has been harmful: The promises that President Obama made about the ACA–cheaper premiums! lower co-pays and deductibles! better coverage!–have completely failed to materialize....