Dr. Barbara Bellar Illinois State Senate 18th District

Unlike a lot of people who blog, I believe it should be your views and opinions and not a bunch of clip and paste articles from someone else. So when something comes along that stops me dead in my tracks, and makes me laugh, I feel it really is something I should share.

Dr. Barbara Bellar is running for the Illinois state senate in the 18th district. The current seat is held by Edward Maloney who is retiring. I consider Senator Maloney to be your typical Anti-Gun Chicago Democrat.  I believe, on its face, the whole gun control debate is hugely disingenuous, so it is no surprise that I would support Dr. Bellar.

In addition to being a physician, Dr. Bellar is, or has been, a Benedictine nun, an Army major, a lawyer, and a college professor. So she is not just another talking head in the crowd.

She recently spoke at a "Women for Romney/Ryan" event, which if you believe the mainstream media there are none, and she made the following statement:

"So let me get this straight. This is a long sentence…

We are going to be gifted with a healthcare plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which reportedly covers ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for sixteen thousand new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn't understand it, passed by congress, that didn't read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief, who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke.

So what the (blank) could possibly go wrong?" 

There simply isn’t anything left to say except Hooah! Major

From Gitmo to Illinois

So this interesting little tidbit just came over the news. Apparently the federal government has purchased the former Illinois Department of Corrections, Thompson Correctional Center.

Apparently the administration plans to buy the Illinois prison that at one point was considered for housing Guantanamo prisoners. Administration officials however have denied that they were looking for a new home for Guantanamo inmates.

According to a DOJ official the reason for the purchase was "about public safety and 50 percent overcrowding in high-security prisons.” They insisted the decision to buy Thomson Correctional Center was a move to alleviate overcrowding in federal prisons and create new jobs in the process. 

Why do I feel like I am at the part of Star Wars, a New Hope, where Obi Wan Kenobi waves his hand and tells the Stormtroopers that “these are not the droids you are looking for.”

I would like to say I believe them, but I just don’t. The original plan to purchase Thompson were specifically to house the Gitmo detainees. That plan was met with a fierce backlash among lawmakers who worried it would pose a security risk. Now, we are told that the plan to house Gitmo detainees has been dropped and instead they will house other federal prisoners.

So that being said, is it only me that wonders if we are looking at a proverbial federal shell game? They open Thompson, move inmates from some other facility, say Marion, and then lo and behold they move the Gitmo detainees to Marion……….

If President Obama gets re-elected, I wonder if this post will become prophetic in six months. Remember he pledged, immediately after taking office, that he would shut down the Gitmo. A pledge that stands as one of the president's most glaring unfulfilled promises to his base.

I know what we are being told, but I just can’t shake the feeling that maybe these are the damn droids we are looking for!!

What exactly did President Obama inherit?

I was watching some recently and heard the oft used mantra “the President inherited this mess from his predecessor” and I wondered, what the hell does that even mean?

Now, just for the record, I am not asking what inherit means. I know I should not even have to mention that, but lately I have come to the realization that sometimes it’s better not to guess that your audience knows what you mean. Sarcasm sometimes does not translate well.

Are they talking about the “recession” and if so, then why is it all Bush’s fault?  It is generally accepted that the recession was brought about by the collapse of the housing bubble. As we entered the recession, a tremendous amount of all mortgages in the United States were considered bad and liable to default. This was a clear result of government housing policies that were designed to encourage home ownership. For more on this topic, read my older post entitled “Fannie, Freddie & Frank”

That being said, should President Bush blame mortgage lenders or homeowners who knew that they simply could not afford the cost of the home but signed on the dotted line any way?  

This is a really sore point with me to be honest. I purchased my first home in 1992. Since that time I have purchased a number of other homes and investment property. I know what I can afford to spend. If you are pocketing $35k a year and someone is telling you to sign your name on the dotted line for your half a million dollar dream home run away very fast………. If you think it’s a great idea, because home ownership is a “right”, and you sign, feel free to pick up your free “It’s all Bush’s fault” poster and enjoy that glass of kool-aid.

Maybe Bush should start blaming President Lyndon Johnson (D) who signed off on passage of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 1965.  Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had an official policy of increasing home ownership by lowering mortgage underwriting standards. This had a significant effect on the quality of mortgages in circulation prior to the recession.

Or how about blaming FDR? After all, FDR (D) signed Fannie Mae into law in 1938 and we know that they were involved in the whole housing Fiasco. But why stop there? How about tossing some blame on President Richard Nixon (R) who in 1970, and with a Democrat House and Senate, authorized Fannie Mae to purchase mortgages, as well as brought Freddie Mac into existence.

Or better yet, how about let’s blame Daddy! In 1992, a Democrat House and Senate established affordable housing goals along with the signature of President George Bush (R). Or how about blaming President Bill Clinton (D) who, in 1999, began pressuring Fannie Mae to increase its ratio of loans to moderate and low income home buyers.

Consider for a moment that the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act required banks to offer loans to borrowers in their service area that were at or below 80% of the area’s median income. Or, in plain language, banks were required to offer loans to people who were less able to afford a mortgage, and they weren’t allowed to use their own lending standards. Why not blame President Carter!!

But who did Bush blame? No one. He took the reigns of the Presidency as the dot.com bubble had burst. Then, with a little less than seven months in office, he was faced with the worst terrorist attack on United States soil since Pearl Harbor. I don’t recall him blaming any one else.

I did not agree with everything he did, but I am also not an idiot and realize that one man cannot make everyone happy. You do the best you can and live with the ramifications. You’re the President. It doesn’t matter who did what when they sat in the seat, it’s what you do now that you’re sitting there.

Maybe that’s what President Obama should have inherited. Class.

He ran on Hope and Change. He said he understood the problems and we were told he was the only person who could fix them.

The bottom line is that this country is in a mess and we need real leadership. Not four more years of blaming Bush.

Absolutely Clueless (Part Deux)

OK, so I take back what I said previously. Apparently the Obama Administration isn’t Absolutely Clueless and knew “within twenty-four hours” that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a terrorist attack and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved.

In fact, a senior intelligence official stated that “No one ... believed that the mortars, indirect and direct fire, and the RPGs were just the work of a mob….. no one." Additionally, officials said the intelligence community knew by Sept. 12 that the militant Ansar al-Shariah and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were likely behind the strike. 

So when Ambassador Susan Rice and Press Secretary Jay Carney were out pitching their story, they knew that they were lying. As recently as this week the President was still alluding to the nonsense about the insulting video that no has seen.

In fact, members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed by administration officials and told the same thing. If that is the case, then those personnel intentionally misled Congress.

Which begs the question, why has the administration been lying to Congress as well as the American people?

I mean wasn't it President Obama who said in 2011 that “even before his death, al Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance, as the overwhelming majority of people saw that the slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries for a better life. By the time we found bin Laden, al Qaeda’s agenda had come to be seen by the vast majority of the region as a dead end, and the people of the Middle East and North Africa had taken their future into their own hands.”

The answer is that we, including the President, don’t see things the way they see them. This “war” ends only two ways. We wipe them out to the last man, or they wipe us out. There is no neutral corner in this war. We are, and always will be to radical Islam, infidels.

Yes, Obama green-lighted the SEAL Team Six op that resulted in Bin Laden’s death. But it took out one person, not an ideology. We’ve grown war weary after a decade. As of 25 September 2012, there have been 3,015 coalition deaths in Afghanistan since the war started. One thousand, nine hundred and forty two US deaths.   Ask the Russians how it worked out for them in the nine years from late1979 to early 1989. They lost over fourteen thousand and over fifty-three thousand wounded. The Mujahideen lost between seventy-five and ninety thousand, with an equal amount wounded. They simply will not back down. And what was the Soviet Unions withdrawal strategy? The first step was to transfer the burden of fighting the mujahideen to the Afghan armed forces, with the aim of preparing them to operate without Soviet help. Al Qaeda was formed from those Mujahideen fighters. Think they don’t remember?

Consider the following assessment from Brian Jenkins, Rand Corporation.

“In the minds of most Americans, al Qaeda descended from the heavens in Wagnerian-opera fashion, on September 11, 2011, putting the organization today at the beginning of its second decade. But al Qaeda was formally established in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988. It claims connection with assaults on American forces in Somalia and Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, declared war on the United States in 1996, and launched its terrorist campaign in earnest in 1998. By 2001, the struggle was already in its second decade. Whether al Qaeda is in its third decade or third century matters little to its leaders, who see the current conflict as the continuation of centuries of armed struggle between believers and infidels, and who expect it to transcend their lifetimes. While al Qaeda, especially its central leadership, has been pummeled, and its capabilities to mount large-scale attacks have been reduced, claims of its imminent defeat are hyperbole.   Al Qaeda is more decentralized, more dependent on its affiliates, its allies, and its ability to radicalize and recruit distant recruits to carry out attacks on its behalf. Its peripheral commands remain strong. Its allies have bought into its ideology of global terrorism. Its communications network continues to function. It is resilient and opportunistic.”

In the end maybe it is easier to blame something tangible, like some two bit movie trailer, then to accept that despite all the rhetoric, despite all the chest thumping, this war will not end. Reality sucks, when your forty some odd days away from an election.

Four More Years?

So last night I am sitting there watching T.V., as I have found it makes for a much better sleeping experience if I get my blood boiling before bedtime, and was once again astounded by the depth of stupidity facing this country.

Recent polling indicates that President Obama has a commanding lead in several of the “battleground” states. Seriously? I won’t get into the methodology of these polls as I don’t believe blogger has the bandwidth to handle such a rant, but the fact that anything is coming out showing the President ahead is mind boggling.

And just when I assumed that my senses had been assaulted enough, here comes a comment from Stephanie Cutter, the Presidents Deputy Campaign Manager.

“That’s the other thing that you find most often with women. They’re not really concerned about what’s happened over the last four years. They really want to know what’s going to happen in the next four years.”

You guys remember her right; she was the one who said she didn’t know the facts about the Joe Soptic ad that accused Gov. Romney of having a hand in his (Soptic's) wife’s death. That was until it was pointed out that they were on a campaign conference call together when he told the story. Even then it was one of those “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes” moment.

Here we have the last manifestation of the Obama Campaign’s “New Reality” tour. In this world, the truth only matters when it is being provided by the campaign. In the latest installment women are being told that they shouldn’t fixate on the “hope and change” they were promised, but rather look “forward” to the amazing things that will happen when the President has four more years to work his magic.

Really Steph? Because you guys were pretty fixated on the past before the President got elected. I believe “inherited” was the word you like to bandy about.

So I thought I might do a little re-cap of the highlights of the last four years for those who might be on the fence a bit.

National Debt:

On Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the federal government’s debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08. As of today it is over sixteen trillion dollars.  Everyone like to bash the numbers, what is his, what isn’t his, does it really truly matter? The nation is drowning and both sides are standing on the boat arguing which life ring is better.

Federal Budget:

President Obama promised to go line by line in the federal budget and removed waste. Despite that promise, in his first year he continued to sign off on discretionary spending. Unfortunately, in a round about way I guess he did make good after, because the Senate, under the “leadership” of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – NV) has not passed a budget in over three years.  Sadly, this is not the hope and change we were expecting. In fact the Presidents budgets have been viewed as so completely unserious that the Senate rejected his 2012 budget by a vote of 97-0. Additionally, a budget proposal based on his 2013 budget plan lost in the House by a vote of 414-0. How bad is it, when you cannot even get one single vote from a member of your own party?

Cut the Deficit:

Four years ago, President Obama campaigned on a promise to cut annual federal budget deficits in half by the end of his term. Now, in pure DC politi-speak, he explains that the deficit he “inherited” is actually on a path to be cut in half just a year later than he promised, measured as a percentage of the economy’s total output. It’s like when you remove money from one account into another account, and then you spend both.

End Partisan Politics:

President Obama promised to transcend Washington partisanship.  Quite the opposite, he has divided DC worse then before. Washington remains stagnant. The Washington of today is as indistinguishable from the one Obama warned against four years ago. In fact, he recently said that the most important lesson he learned during his first term in the White House is that "you can't change Washington from the inside."

Foreign Relations:

Candidate Obama promised to restore America’s standing across the globe and to be a strong and responsible leader on foreign policy. In fact, in 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."  But what has he actually done?  Read Here: Foreign Affairs

Just ask yourself, if Bush were still president would they be saying the same thing.

End the Iraq War (& Afghanistan):

President Obama said he would end the war safely and responsibly “within 16 months.” So what happened? The troops were withdrawn under the terms of a bilateral agreement which was signed in 2008 by President Bush in which all US Forces were mandated to withdraw from Iraqi territory by 31 December 2011.  So Obama failed in his promise, but kept Bush’s agreement.

OK, see here is a big problem for me. I’m against both wars…………..you, in the corner, get up off the floor and shut your mouth, you look stupid. Let me explain.

They are pointless. Don’t talk to me about 9/11 and the war on Terror. I was there at its birth. But the notion that, in some manner, shape or form, we can win over the hearts and minds of these people is ignorant. The only time they don’t hate each other is when they have an infidel to hate. The only thing they respect is someone with a bigger stick. Putting boots on the ground is pointless in the sense that we do with large brigades and regiments. Like bringing a mallet and chisel in to do brain surgery.

So where are we at? Sectarian violence is spreading throughout Iraq. Think Republicans and Democrats with RPG’s, AK-47’s and car bombs. Al Qaeda is making significant inroads. Anyone who tells you the threat is minimal is an idiot. A small, highly motivated, ideologically group can ruin your day very quickly and do so indefinitely. 

Over in Afghanistan, while the last of the “surge” troops are gone, more than seventy-five thousand ground forces remain for the foreseeable future. Despite our best efforts, increase in Taliban activity goes on and there is now a growing trend of Afghanistan soldiers and police turning on their US and NATO partners. Now our soldiers have to worry about enemies both in front and behind them. You see, all these groups have to do is wait you out. They know we don’t have the patience to remain forever. So they will wait till we begin to pull out, and then hit harder and harder, until you throw up your hands and just pull everyone out. Don’t believe me; ask the Russians how it worked out for them.

My opinion is you are not going to change these people. All they have ever known and understood is brutal regimes. Hold the regimes accountable, and the people will learn from that. From the beginning we should have sent in Special Forces ground troops to identify and target the leaders and then dropped massive ordinance from on high. Tell them you try anything stupid again and we will drop twice as much. Bombs are a helluva lot cheaper than the lives of US soldiers.

Saved the Auto Industry:

I know the President loves to take credit for this one but I just wanted to remind readers that is was in fact then President Bush who provided the initial funding for the auto industry bailout. Personally, I disagreed with the bailout. I think GM and Chrysler got into the mess they did by making shitty cars and unions milked every dime they could. Maybe if one company had failed it would have sent a strong message through both management and union. A recent Gallup Poll indicates that 51% of those polled also disapproved so I guess I am not alone.

Transparency in Government:

President Obama once said that his administration would have an “unprecedented” level of transparency. Let’s tick this one off:

• News agencies and others have complained about the difficulty in getting information through Freedom of Information Act filings.
• The President used executive privilege to keep congressional investigators from getting Justice Department documents on the agency’s failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-tracking effort.  
• Candidate Obama said the Health Care Debate would be televised. However, final health care talks, including the meetings between the House and Senate, were held behind closed doors.  
• White House visitor logs are missing the names and details of visitors to the White House.
• In fact, Lobbyists met with administration officials outside the White House in an effort to keep them off visitor’s logs.

In the end, you have to ask yourself whether Candidate Obama was just ignorant about the promises he was making, or did he just lie to garner votes.

Honestly, I disagreed with President Bush about a lot of things. I don’t think you can be President and please everyone. But I fundamentally disagree with just about everything President Obama is doing and for the love of God that does not mean I am a racist.

The economy is not where it needs to be and will not get there on the course we are on. You cannot, on one hand, blame capitalism and Wall Street and then, on the other hand, expect them to produce for you. The tax code is a horror and worse it is very unsettled. There is no sound long term outlook.  Heck, we don’t know what’s going to happen if or when the Bush tax credits end.

This notion that we should just go ahead and raise the taxes on the rich is absurd.  So, that would do what? Generate enough income for the government to run eight extra days? Really, that’s the plan? Redistribution of wealth is not an answer. There comes a point when the people you take from, to give to those less fortunate, simply stop doing for themselves and come to you for the same handout. When that happens, where do you think the money will come from?

I remember watching a show one day about some doomsday people. They were living high on the hog. They had maxed out credit cards buying and doing what they wanted. Their philosophy? According to the Mayan Calendar the world was ending on December 21^st 2012, so they didn’t have to pay it back. My first thought was that December 22^nd was going to be a bitch for them.

Why do I have a feeling this nation is acting the same way?

President Obama said in February 2009 “Look, I’m at the start of my administration. One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years. A year from now I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there. If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

The question has been asked, are you better off now then you were four years ago. The easy answer is No. The deeper answer is that President Obama has just been the latest captain of a ship that has been going in the wrong direction for decades. The hard part is making the difficult choices to alter the direction.  Look at Spain, Greece and France and see how well that goes over.

More importantly, what happens the day he gets reelected and he wakes up and looks in the mirror and realizes that he has become his “predecessor” and no longer has anyone else to blame.

Absolutely Clueless

OK, I’m not a big Monday morning quarterbacking, but will someone please buy the White House a friggen clue already.

It’s been nearly a week and half since we tragically lost our Ambassador to Libya along with three other brave Americans, not to mention those who were injured in the……. OK, repeat after me “TERRORIST ATTACK”

Now, that wasn’t hard…………..right?

Apparently it is for the White House. It took them eight days to state for the record what the rest of the world seemed to know the day after. Hell it took the Libyan President less than half the time to publicly state that it was “planned far in advance.”

For the last week and half, the incompetency level over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been ratcheted up to the nth degree. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why.

Lately, much has been made about the President skipping out on his regular daily intelligence briefings. Now, some will say that he gets written briefings and doesn’t need to sit down for them………..really? Honestly, you’re going to hold on to that position?

Newsflash, I did my fair share of Intel time and I can tell you that if you believe that in your heart, I’m glad you’re not in politics. There are two types of Intel. What you willing to put on paper, and what you feel in your heart. It’s like being a cop, you just know when something isn’t right, even when nothing is going wrong………. YET.

But the President doesn’t believe that, he seems to feel that he can look at a briefing paper and know what is really going on in the world without talking to his Intel people.

It’s like a young naïve politician blasting the President on his bad foreign policy, making grand promises, and then getting elected into office and finding out just how bad a place the world really was.

But that would never happen, right?

The President, and all of his supporters, ran on how he was going to be the one to reconcile the United States with the rest of the world, there would be peace on earth, good will towards man, and cats and dogs would lie down with one another…… plus, we were part of a coalition that saved Libya right !!!..........right??!??.......uh huh.

No way there could be a coordinated terrorist attack against us……….that would mean that they really don’t like us, and then maybe it wasn’t really all George Bush’s fault after all…… perish the thought.

So, the President, through his proxies, starts playing the old “spontaneous demonstration”……… uh huh.

Just a bunch of good old boys wound up over some “film” that apparently NO ONE had seen prior to all these spontaneous demonstrations.” Oh and the film was produced by an Egyptian who apparently has more aliases than Sybil.

I worked a lot of demonstrations, and I don’t recall too many of them being spontaneous. What, you think Tariq and Salaam just happened to be walking down the street, minding their own business, armed with RPG’s, grenades and mortars and just happened to run into a dozen or so of their friends, in front of the American Consulate, on the anniversary of September 11th…… Yep, sounds innocent enough to me.

So after basically telling all of the U.S. and the rest of the world that this was so not a terrorist attack what does the spin machine over at the White House conclude today?

Well according to Press Secretary Jay Carney, after eight days of saying that it was most certainly NOT a terrorist attack, he had this little gem “It is, I think, self evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently and the result was four deaths of American officials. That is self evident.” 

Really Jay………. Seriously. So when did it all become so self evident?

Maybe it’s time for the President to begin to sit in on a few more of those daily intelligence briefings. I think instead of reading the reports, maybe he should be asking a few questions.

Then again, rescheduling fund raisers would be so time consuming.

Foreign Affairs

I’m sitting here this morning, watching as the situation in the Middle East begins to spill over. What started out in Cairo, Egypt and has spread to Tunisia and Yemen. In addition, we have had our Embassy in Libya attacked and tragically lost the Ambassador and three others in what is being described as a planned, coordinated attack for the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

What strikes me as odd however is that as I combed through the various media outlets, there seems to be more attention directed at the republican presidential nominee on his commentary the other day.

So what exactly did he say? “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

OK, so what exactly was the administrations response that led to that stinging rebuke from Mr. Romney?

Early Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued a statement that appeared to criticize the video that had sparked the initial incident in an attempt to defuse the protests.

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims, as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

Apparently the White House has come out and walked back that statement, explaining that it was a low level embassy staffer who didn’t have the authority. Uh huh, yeah.  Washington, and by extension all of its many governmental branches, operates on the “mother, may I?” principal.

If you think some low level staffer would risk their career to blurt that out, I’ve got this really nice ocean front property in Kansas for sale.

Truth is, whether you want to admit it or now, even the media has their favorites and none more so than President Barack Obama. Like rabid sports fanatics they will vilify and ostracize anyone that is on the opposing team, until such time as that person joins their side and then they swoon over them.

Think Johnny Damon when he went from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees.

But the bottom line is, it’s not the truth.

One paper commented “Mitt Romney’s stinging blasts at President Barack Obama in the wake of attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in Libya and Egypt was a vivid illustration of how much American politics has changed.”

Really?

Where were these same enlightened folks when Senator John Kerry was openly criticizing then President George Bush about the Iraq war? This didn’t go on for days, this went on for months. President Bush was mocked openly by any number of political, media and entertainment outlets. Who can forget the term “cowboy diplomacy?”

So why is it, that when you have a D next to your name, there is a different standard?

Why when they protest the United States in the Middle East is it “failed cowboy diplomacy” is a republican is in office, and yet when they do the very same thing under a democrat you can hear crickets chirp.

Unfortunately, it is because the media is like a rabid sports fanatic. Truth matters not, just the uniform you are wearing.

When it suited their agenda, they were happy to present comments like the following:

"We are dealing with an isolated country (Iraq) with a fourth-rate military power, led by a murderous tyrant that nobody likes. And yet the [U.N.] Security Council is split. Why? It is because of the inept and bungled and cowboy diplomacy of President Bush and his senior advisers. He has spent a great deal of time in insulting our allies, in denigrating the United Nations,” Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, D-Pa.

"This crowd (Bush administration) speaks harshly and as a result, you see that when it is time that we need our friends, it is hard to get them to come with us," Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Fla.

"I think it represents a failure on the part of the administration to construct the international coalition as in past efforts” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

"We frankly have no policy now. I wouldn't call it benign neglect, it's malign neglect," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars, but it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way." Sen. John Kerry, D-Ma.

"The danger (North Korea) is great and yet the administration is saying it's not even a crisis. That's not credible," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Wow, does anyone remember North Korea anymore? I’d almost forgotten about them. Know that Daffy Duck & Elvis aficionado Kim Jong Il is gone, Lil’ Kim is spending more time with his new wife than his nuclear weapons.

So is it okay as a politician to attack the sitting President when he is not from your party? Apparently it is. But it begs the question, why do the media only vilify it when it is done by the right?

Whatever your feelings on the topic, President Obama did withdraw our forces from Iraq. So what has been the outcome? Here are some of the most recent news reports:

• Iraq's fugitive Sunni vice president was sentenced to death by hanging on charges he masterminded death squads against rivals in a terror trial that has fueled sectarian tensions in the country.

• Insurgents recently unleashed an onslaught of bombings and shootings across Iraq, killing at least 92 people in one of the deadliest days this year (2012).
• 
  A Shiite militant group is threatening U.S. interests in Iraq as part of the backlash over an anti-Islam film it has described as “heinous.”

On top of that we have endured the “Arab Spring” unrest in the Middle East since December 2010.

To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Civil war is being waged in Syria. Major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan.

Makes you kind of wonder what the press would be saying if a republican had been in the White House?

Oh, and just how did President Obama sum it all up? 

Well, he flew to Las Vegas for a fundraiser, where he told the cheering crowd “we had a tough day.”

Wow, four dead, an mission burned down, and violent unrest spreading across the region and it’s a “tough day.”

Somewhere, someone is playing a violin as the flames claim the republic.