RUTHIE BLUM: OBAMA PLAYS THE OSAMA CARD **** MUSTREAD
By Ruth King on May 5th, 2012
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1830
Playing the Osama card
U.S. President Barack Obama has a lot to be worried about these days, as his bid for re-election pushes into high gear. Now that the Republicans have an actual candidate, the U.S. president knows he cannot merely rest on the dubious laurels that landed him in the White House three and a half years ago.
Back then, his credentials consisted of his being the “Great Black Hope” and the ultimate anti-Bush. That female reporters were unabashedly throwing their underwear at him as though they were groupies at a rock concert didn’t hurt. And because he was such an unknown quantity (due to his not really having accomplished anything up until that point), a lot of otherwise average Americans didn’t bother to read beyond the fawning headlines to learn just what a radical he actually was.
Today, however, Obama is no longer the guy who was promising to transform America into one big happy labor union. He is now the incumbent, with a real record – and it’s a pitiful one indeed.
This is not to say that he has lost the support, or adoration, of much of the media. On the contrary, because Republican contender Mitt Romney is a Mormon who is proud of his affluence and business successes, the press has an even easier time portraying Obama as the champion of the poor. That it is the president who has been creating more poverty with each passing minute doesn’t come into the reportage. Luckily for all the president’s sycophants, the blame can be placed squarely on Wall Street.
But those among the voting public who, last time around, weren’t paying so much attention to Obama’s history of anti-American values, have become aware of the consequences of his ideology. This is not a result of their reading The New York Times, but rather due to their inability to pay their mortgages, to count on getting their social security when they retire, to understand complex health-care procedures, and – above all – to feel anything but hopeful.
Though it is difficult to detect how much weight Americans give to foreign policy (as opposed to Israelis, for whom this is usually the main factor in an election year), they do know when their country is doing them proud, and when it isn’t. They are also aware that, with all of Obama’s promises about making the United States more likeable and liked in the world, the country’s international standing has continued to plummet, and the president seems either not to notice or not to care.
What he does care very much about is staying in power. This makes sense, because he is a politician, and that is what all of his ilk seek. But in Obama’s case, doing so has a particular urgency. As he has made clear to various world leaders, he needs a second term in order to further his (and their) agenda, unhindered by the need to curry favor at the ballot box.
His latest ploy to woo members of the public whose patriotism is not in question – but whose votes may very well be – is to put Osama bin Laden on display. Like a hunter mounting the antlers of a moose on a cabin wall, Obama has been using the one-year anniversary of the al-Qaida mastermind’s assassination to tout the accomplishment as though he himself had done the shooting.
Talk about low-hanging fruit.
Finding and killing the man behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks is the epitome of a “consensus” issue. When the deed was carried out a year ago, you could almost hear Americans from coast-to-coast singing, “Ding-dong the witch is dead!”
It was one of those moments when people like me rain on everybody’s parade. I didn’t see what there was to celebrate that day. Stomping on a cockroach in an infested kitchen does not eliminate the need for a massive extermination job throughout the house, if not the entire neighborhood.
Obama’s constant boasting about his having taken out bin Laden – and simultaneous accusations against Romney that he wouldn’t have done it – has to be one of the president’s slimiest, most cynical ploys to date.
It is Obama’s appeasing attitude toward the radical Arab-Muslim world that enabled the Pakistanis to harbor the arch-terrorist in the first place.
It is Obama’s incessant wink to the Islamists that has provided the most fertile ground for the spread of ideas and actions espoused by bin Laden, his followers, and all the other jihadist groups and factions that have been multiplying exponentially with each passing “Arab Spring” day.
By the time of his death, bin Laden had spent nearly a decade in hiding, resentful of the way business was being conducted in his physical absence by his network of underlings. As his documents and letters that were revealed this week indicate, he wasn’t at all pleased with the lack of progress where destroying the United States was concerned. His plan was to have Obama and General David Petraeus knocked off, to speed up the process. Then, he said, Joe Biden would become president, and America would implode.
This just goes to show that evil and stupidity often go hand-in-hand. Obama is just as capable of causing the U.S. to crumble as Biden. Bin Laden should have understood that.
What Americans need to understand is that bin Laden may be gone, but his legacy is alive and well – and being abetted by the useful idiot occupying the Oval Office.
Ruthie Blum, a former senior editor at The Jerusalem Post, is the author of “Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring,’” to be released by RVP Press in the summer
By Ruth King on May 5th, 2012
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1830
Playing the Osama card
U.S. President Barack Obama has a lot to be worried about these days, as his bid for re-election pushes into high gear. Now that the Republicans have an actual candidate, the U.S. president knows he cannot merely rest on the dubious laurels that landed him in the White House three and a half years ago.
Back then, his credentials consisted of his being the “Great Black Hope” and the ultimate anti-Bush. That female reporters were unabashedly throwing their underwear at him as though they were groupies at a rock concert didn’t hurt. And because he was such an unknown quantity (due to his not really having accomplished anything up until that point), a lot of otherwise average Americans didn’t bother to read beyond the fawning headlines to learn just what a radical he actually was.
Today, however, Obama is no longer the guy who was promising to transform America into one big happy labor union. He is now the incumbent, with a real record – and it’s a pitiful one indeed.
This is not to say that he has lost the support, or adoration, of much of the media. On the contrary, because Republican contender Mitt Romney is a Mormon who is proud of his affluence and business successes, the press has an even easier time portraying Obama as the champion of the poor. That it is the president who has been creating more poverty with each passing minute doesn’t come into the reportage. Luckily for all the president’s sycophants, the blame can be placed squarely on Wall Street.
But those among the voting public who, last time around, weren’t paying so much attention to Obama’s history of anti-American values, have become aware of the consequences of his ideology. This is not a result of their reading The New York Times, but rather due to their inability to pay their mortgages, to count on getting their social security when they retire, to understand complex health-care procedures, and – above all – to feel anything but hopeful.
Though it is difficult to detect how much weight Americans give to foreign policy (as opposed to Israelis, for whom this is usually the main factor in an election year), they do know when their country is doing them proud, and when it isn’t. They are also aware that, with all of Obama’s promises about making the United States more likeable and liked in the world, the country’s international standing has continued to plummet, and the president seems either not to notice or not to care.
What he does care very much about is staying in power. This makes sense, because he is a politician, and that is what all of his ilk seek. But in Obama’s case, doing so has a particular urgency. As he has made clear to various world leaders, he needs a second term in order to further his (and their) agenda, unhindered by the need to curry favor at the ballot box.
His latest ploy to woo members of the public whose patriotism is not in question – but whose votes may very well be – is to put Osama bin Laden on display. Like a hunter mounting the antlers of a moose on a cabin wall, Obama has been using the one-year anniversary of the al-Qaida mastermind’s assassination to tout the accomplishment as though he himself had done the shooting.
Talk about low-hanging fruit.
Finding and killing the man behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks is the epitome of a “consensus” issue. When the deed was carried out a year ago, you could almost hear Americans from coast-to-coast singing, “Ding-dong the witch is dead!”
It was one of those moments when people like me rain on everybody’s parade. I didn’t see what there was to celebrate that day. Stomping on a cockroach in an infested kitchen does not eliminate the need for a massive extermination job throughout the house, if not the entire neighborhood.
Obama’s constant boasting about his having taken out bin Laden – and simultaneous accusations against Romney that he wouldn’t have done it – has to be one of the president’s slimiest, most cynical ploys to date.
It is Obama’s appeasing attitude toward the radical Arab-Muslim world that enabled the Pakistanis to harbor the arch-terrorist in the first place.
It is Obama’s incessant wink to the Islamists that has provided the most fertile ground for the spread of ideas and actions espoused by bin Laden, his followers, and all the other jihadist groups and factions that have been multiplying exponentially with each passing “Arab Spring” day.
By the time of his death, bin Laden had spent nearly a decade in hiding, resentful of the way business was being conducted in his physical absence by his network of underlings. As his documents and letters that were revealed this week indicate, he wasn’t at all pleased with the lack of progress where destroying the United States was concerned. His plan was to have Obama and General David Petraeus knocked off, to speed up the process. Then, he said, Joe Biden would become president, and America would implode.
This just goes to show that evil and stupidity often go hand-in-hand. Obama is just as capable of causing the U.S. to crumble as Biden. Bin Laden should have understood that.
What Americans need to understand is that bin Laden may be gone, but his legacy is alive and well – and being abetted by the useful idiot occupying the Oval Office.
Ruthie Blum, a former senior editor at The Jerusalem Post, is the author of “Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring,’” to be released by RVP Press in the summer
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