The Patriot Post® · Obama's Legacy Items
We have had awful presidents in the past, but nothing that compares with what Barack Obama has managed to do to us over the past eight years. Just thinking about some of his misdeeds, things like Cash for Clunkers; Operation Fast & Furious; Solyndra and other costly green energy scams; the pullout from Iraq and the predictable rise of ISIS; lies about Benghazi and the defeat of al Qaeda; the slowest economic recovery since the 1930s; pushing the reset button with Russia after promising to be even more flexible after the 2012 election; shredding the Constitution and legislating with his pen and his phone; the flouting of federal immigration laws; appointing the likes of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; siding with the scummy likes of Black Lives Matter and against the police; rolling out the red carpet for thousands of Muslims certain to include any number of jihadists intent on killing Americans; and defunding the military; is like taking a leisurely stroll through a chamber of horrors.
But the scariest thing of all is that, after eight years, most Americans think he has done a good job and will be sorry to see him go.
Still, all those other sins pale by comparison to the two items in which Obama takes the greatest pride. Those would be ObamaCare and the nuclear deal with Iran. The first of these has already failed so badly that even Bill Clinton has taken to calling it a “crazy mess.”
When people, such as Trump, suggest repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with something pretty much like what we had before Obama and his stooges in Congress decided to improve things, Obama tells us that there are now 20 million people with health insurance who didn’t have it before. What he doesn’t mention is that a lot of them are illegal aliens and that nearly all of them are having to be subsidized by people who work for a living and pay taxes.
As for the deal with Iran, it is everything that Trump says our trade deals are, but worse. For one thing, as we learn from a new book by Jay Solomon called “The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East,” Obama was obsessed with changing America’s policy towards the terrorist regime from the very beginning of his administration.
He started by sending secret letters to the Ayatollah in which he recognized the prerogatives of the “Islamic republic” and forswore any attempt at regime change.
When the sanctions against Iran had the number one state supporter of international terrorism on the financial ropes, fast-approaching a barter economy, Obama came to their rescue with a deal that delivered well over a billion dollars in hard currency. In the meantime, people like John Kerry and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes informed their stooges in the media that renewed sanctions would destroy the global economy without bothering to explain how.
Rhodes would later tell the New York Times Magazine that they sold the deal to the American people and Congress (a deal, by the way, that not only gave Iran a ton of money and a legitimate path to a nuclear arsenal, but demanded absolutely nothing in return, except that Iran agree to sign on the dotted line) by making cynical use of “Iran-issue lobbyists, White House-minted experts and juvenile, know-nothing, journalists.”
It’s worth noting that in the time since the deal was cut, Iran has sent its defense minister to Moscow to purchase weaponry, continued to enlarge and improve its long-range missiles, cozied up to Vladimir Putin, extended its tentacles into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, taunted our warships in international waters and, oh yes, pantsed us and called us dirty names.
Keep in mind that this is all the work of a president whom tens of millions of our fellow Americans wish was not prohibited by the 22nd Amendment from seeking a third term.
While in my car the other day, I heard the allegedly-conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved deliver such a passionate defense of Hillary Clinton, you might have thought you were listening to Lannie Davis, John Podesta, Donna Brazile or Huma Abedin.
A caller called in to defend those in Trump crowds who chanted “Lock her up!” The caller insisted that Mrs. Clinton belonged in jail. Since I happened to agree, I was taken aback when Medved challenged him to name the crime for which she should be imprisoned. He even dared the caller to explain what possible unsavory motive she could have had for using a private server.
I have no idea if the caller wasn’t too bright or if he was easily rattled or if, like me, he couldn’t quite believe his ears, but he failed to point out that even James Comey had said that Mrs. Clinton had handled security secrets in a careless and reckless manner. Even if criminal intent wasn’t involved, that, alone, would constitute a federal crime. But the caller might have also pointed out that her motive was obviously to conceal the wheeling-and-dealings of the money-laundering enterprise known as the Clinton Foundation, as more and more of the Wikileaks documents have borne out.
Medved is so cockeyed that he went on to say that when he finally read the excerpts of the $250,000 speeches Mrs. Clinton delivered to Wall Street, he was surprised that she sounded so conservative. Funny, but I never heard any Republican, let alone any conservative, say that he thought nobody was in a better position to regulate the wolves of Wall Street than the wolves of Wall Street.
Over the years, Medved, one of the more self-righteous of the Never-Trumpers, has made it clear that he greatly admired Mrs. Clinton as far back as when they both attended Yale. Clearly, even as they both approach 70, Medved hasn’t yet gotten over his schoolboy crush.
Now, normally, when I take off on a politician, a federal bureaucrat or a political pundit, I send the piece along to them, giving them the opportunity to attack me or defend themselves. But experience has taught me that there are some — including Medved, Dennis Prager, Michael Savage and Charles Krauthammer — who respond only to flattery.