JUST A LIE BEFORE HE GOES

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BARACK OBAMA, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

Taking a few questions following a statement on the dire situation in Iraq that President Obama gave on the White House lawn as he departed for his Martha’s Vineyard vacation (White House transcript here, White House video here), President Obama availed himself of the any port in a storm tactic that has helped him so much along his way. The reporter asking the last question Obama deigned to field wondered whether he had any second thoughts about pulling all of our troops out of Iraq. You may recall that only yesterday the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq was Obama’s boast. ‘Twas a famous victory. Indeed, it was one of the predicates of Obama’s reelection campaign. That was then, however, and this is now:

Q Mr. President, do you have any second thoughts about pulling all ground troops out of Iraq? And does it give you pause as the U.S. — is it doing the same thing in Afghanistan?

THE PRESIDENT: What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

And the Iraqi government, based on its political considerations, in part because Iraqis were tired of a U.S. occupation, declined to provide us those assurances. And on that basis, we left. We had offered to leave additional troops. So when you hear people say, do you regret, Mr. President, not leaving more troops, that presupposes that I would have overridden this sovereign government that we had turned the keys back over to and said, you know what, you’re democratic, you’re sovereign, except if I decide that it’s good for you to keep 10,000 or 15,000 or 25,000 Marines in your country, you don’t have a choice — which would have kind of run contrary to the entire argument we were making about turning over the country back to Iraqis, an argument not just made by me, but made by the previous administration.

So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis were — a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq.

Obama was, as always, exploiting the ignorance of low-information voters. The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack recalls that during the 2012 foreign policy presidential debate, Obama told the American people that he didn’t support leaving any troops in Iraq. “Every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong,” Obama told GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day.”

John then retrieves the transcript reflecting Obama’s denial that he had ever supported a status of forces agreement that would have left troops in Iraq:

MR. ROMNEY: [W]ith regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should have been a status of forces agreement. Did you —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That’s not true.

MR. ROMNEY: Oh, you didn’t — you didn’t want a status of forces agreement?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: No, but what I — what I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.

“Here’s one thing I’ve learned as commander in chief,” Obama said at the end of the exchange. “You’ve got to be clear, both to our allies and our enemies, about where you stand and what you mean. Now, you just gave a speech a few weeks ago in which you said we should still have troops in Iraq. That is not a recipe for making sure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the Middle East.”

McCormack has more on the complexities underlying our withdrawal here.

Obama’s dishonesty is blatant and habitual. It seems to me to reflect a bad character allied with great confidence that he can get away with it.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/08/just-a-lie-before-he-goes.php

OBAMA’S PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR NOT ACTING IN IRAQ

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN IRAQ, ISIS, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

Why did President Obama stand by while ISIS conquered much of Iraq? The reason seems straightforward: he doesn’t believe in using force unless it’s part of an international effort.

Obama has offered a different explanation, though. He says he’s been unwilling to intervene because “there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.” “The only lasting solution,” he adds, “is reconciliation among Iraqi communities and stronger Iraqi security forces.”

Obama is referring to the fact that the Maliki government’s outrageous conduct alienated Sunnis (and others) to the point that many Sunnis thought ISIS might be preferable to continued rule by Baghdad. Thus, as Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post has reported, “the administration worried that interjecting itself into the conflict would inevitably open it to charges of siding with one side or the other in what has become an increasingly sectarian battle.”

In the same vein, Obama has let it be known that he will not permit the U.S. to serve as Maliki’s air force or, for that matter, the Kurds’.

I assume that this is all a pretext for Obama’s preference for inaction. If not, it reflects criminally bad thinking — the equivalent of refusing to help a fire department put out a deadly fire because the department is corrupt.

Had Obama moved to stop ISIS as it began its conquests in Iraq, he would not have sided with Maliki over Sunnis. The military action would have been directed against ISIS, not the Sunni population. ISIS is evil made manifest. The fact that some Sunnis are blind to this reality (or are okay with it) hardly justifies U.S. inaction.

If Obama declined to take military action because he just didn’t want to fight, that’s unfortunate and possibly tragic, but understandable. If he declined because he didn’t want to take sides in a battle between pure evil and a legitimate, though badly flawed, government, that’s reprehensible. Moral cowardice is much worse than the ordinary kind.

As for the president’s unwillingness to become “Maliki’s air force,” this sounds smart until one gives it a moment’s thought. In other words, it is vintage Obama.

Even Eric Holder and John Kerry acknowledge that ISIS poses a potential threat to America’s security. That being so, we can, in Obama’s terms, view Maliki’s forces and the Kurds as “America’s army.” Serving as “the air force” in joint operations against our sworn and deadly enemy, while others do the hard fighting, is a good deal for the U.S.

For more than five years, President Obama has made the U.S. both the army and the air force of Afghanistan, notwithstanding the massive shortcomings of Karzai and his government. ISIS is an even more dangerous force than the Taliban. Obama’s unwillingness to take it on, even from the air, was incoherent.

Obama claims that there can be no “lasting solution” in Iraq until the Iraqis achieve national reconciliation. But our concern right now shouldn’t be with a “lasting solution;” our concern should be with defeating ISIS.

A lasting solution based on national reconciliation is another way of describing “nation building.” How ironic that Obama professes the need for nation building in Iraq as a prerequisite for sustained U.S. air attacks on ISIS. This is a man who will use any excuse not to take on America’s enemies.

There was a time when national reconciliation seemed possible in Iraq. But once Obama disengaged, that moment passed, probably forever.

It may be that Iraq can patch together a national government less objectionable to Sunnis and other minorities than Maliki’s. But Obama concedes that winning over the Sunnis “is going to take some time” and cannot be accomplished “in weeks.”

How much more territory will ISIS capture in the meantime? How many more innocents will ISIS butcher?

And what excuse will Obama proffer for inaction if and when momentary “national reconciliation” is achieved?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/08/obamas-pathetic-excuse-for-not-acting-in-iraq.php

IT’S WHITE PEOPLE ALL THE WAY DOWN

Liberalism has been on a hair-trigger for several decades now about “blaming the victim” for any misfortune or ill-circumstance that they may be suffering—sometimes with good reason, but often not.  The irony is that liberals never seem to notice their symmetrical sin of blaming everything on racism, the “System,” the class structure of oppression, the Judean People’s Front, etc.  Like the apocryphal story of Bertrand Russell and turtles, for the left it’s always white people all the way down. Take, for example, the latest outrage against the developers of a smart phone app that helps you flag high-crime neighborhoods to avoid:

Smiling Young White People Make App for Avoiding Black Neighborhoods

By Sam Biddle

Is there any way to keep white people from using computers, before this whole planet is ruined? I ask because the two enterprising white entrepreneurs above just made yet another app for avoiding non-white areas of your town—and it’s really taking off!

Crain’s reports on SketchFactor, a racist app made for avoiding “sketchy” neighborhoods, which is the term young white people use to describe places where they don’t feel safe because they watched all five seasons of The Wire.

Like the proprietors of Uber, SketchFactor is fighting back.  Good for them:

It’s no secret. We’ve seen the negative press.

Setting the record straight: SketchFactor is a tool for anyone, anywhere, at any time. We have a reporting mechanism for racial profiling, harassment, low lighting, desolate areas, weird stuff, you name it. When people actually download the app, they see that this is truly a tool for everyone. These hit pieces have attacked the founders personally.

We get it, they need clicks. However, the reporters of these pieces never contacted us, never interviewed us, and the app wasn’t even live when they wrote it.

Got to log off now so I can download SketchFactor right away. Can they make a companion app to avoid reductive liberal Internet stupidity?

JOHN adds: Well, we wouldn’t want to avoid liberal internet stupidity entirely. We need the clicks!

Ferguson Is Not Iraq

Ferguson Is Not Iraq Contra smug liberals, riots in Missouri are a far cry from sectarian violence in the Middle East. 

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Over at Vox, Max Fisher has indulged  in what is becoming an increasingly common left-of-center pastime: smugly insinuating that the United States’s favorable impression of itself as a stable and developed nation is in some serious way misplaced. “How,” Fisher asks, “would American media cover the news from Ferguson, Missouri, if it were happening in just about any other country?” Substituting “province” for “state,” “sect” for “party,” and “village” for “city,” Fisher answers his own inquiry by fashioning a “satirical” description of “the restive American province of Missouri” — a backward, fractious sort of place that hosts “simmering sectarian tensions and brutal regime crackdowns,” and in which “ancient communal tensions have boiled over into full-blown violence.” “Officials,” Fisher jokes, “are warning of a potential humanitarian crisis.”

The intention of these linguistic games is typically twofold. The first is reasonable: To point out that domestic coverage of foreign politics is often hopelessly simplistic. (One suspects that as an employee of Vox , Fisher understands this well.) But the second, far less benign in nature, is to indulge the grotesque, asinine, but fashionable conceit that the United States is a dangerous outlier among the developed nations of the world — a country that is exceptional, but for all the wrong reasons. In this imagining, America simply can’t get with the program, its antediluvian people refusing, inexplicably, to be disarmed; declining to countenance any restrictions on the “hate speech” that their betters just know  needs prosecution; insisting, stupidly, that their representatives spend vast sums of money maintaining the military; clinging doggedly to their religious liberty, thereby holding back scientific and cultural advancement; dissenting from the central-government takeovers of health care and education that are de rigueur  elsewhere; and, to their eternal shame, hosting a society that is so inherently racist that it is still suffering riots in 2014. Channeling this instinct perfectly, Bill Maher lamented on CNN last year that “there’s a great, smart European country in America; it’s just surrounded by a bunch of rednecks.” Those “rednecks” are at the heart of Fisher’s joke.

In reality, though, his is a strange reaction. What is happening in Ferguson is complex and it is delicate. I have offered a few earnest criticisms — on the one hand of the  police response and of the Right’s reflexive tendency to  change the subject; on the other of the tendency to presume that the cop must be guilty, and of the willingness to extrapolate out from this one incident trends that simply do not exist — and I stand by them. It being simultaneously true that justice is a process and not an outcome and  that America’s history makes skepticism toward the police inevitable in times such as this, there is little we can do other than to react to the information as it comes to us. I do not know what happened between Officer Wilson and Michael Brown, and neither does almost anybody else. What I do know, however, is that it is a significant mistake to presume that there is something unique about the situation we are witnessing in Missouri. There is not. Other developed countries have precisely the same problems with rioters as does the United States, and — funnily enough — they tend to cover them in almost precisely the same way, too.

We do not need to look for examples, as Fisher suggests that we might, to “Iraq or Pakistan.” (Vox rather likes this idea today: It just posted  an “Iraq or Missouri” piece .) Instead, we may cast our eyes across the Atlantic. In 2011, after a black man named Mark Duggan was shot dead by London police, England was rocked by rioting and looting. Critics charged that the officers had overreacted — possibly as a result of latent racial animus — and that they had then refused to investigate the incident in a timely and professional manner. The police’s response to the subsequent unrest was also denounced, with many suggesting that the show of force was responsible for making the discontent worse. Mark Duggan’s friends took to chanting “there can be no peace without justice”; local leaders complained about the breakdown in trust between the police and the black community, specifically describing widespread “stop and search” policies as being problematic. “Many of those involved,” a  Guardian survey reported, “said they felt like they were participating in explicitly anti-police riots.” The original grievance having been cynically hijacked by troublemakers, the rioting spread outside of London — to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, and beyond. Five British civilians were murdered, and at least 20 civilians were hospitalized. One hundred and eighty-six police officers and ten firefighters were injured. More than 100 houses, four buses, and a host of stores and public buildings were burned to the ground. More than 3,000 people were arrested, of which around 1,000 were charged. How did the media in Britain and the United States react to these incidents — taking place, as they were, in “any other country”?  In almost exactly the same way  as they  have to  Ferguson — some critical of the riots, some defensive , some taking a middle path.

 

Serious riots have been started in Britain over trifles. The previous year, on November 10, a mob had broken into the Conservative Party’s headquarters in London. There they smashed windows, lit fires, and vandalized the reception area. A few among the group made it up to the roof, from which they threw shards of broken glass and fire extinguishers at the police. This, alas, was just the beginning. Twenty days later, a related group vandalized Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, threw bottles and fireworks at riot police, and, in South London, set off smoke bombs. And, per  Time magazine, on December 9, 2010, London was once again beset by “chaos.” Specifically, rioters

broke through metal barricades and used them to smash windows at the Supreme Court. They urinated on a statue of Winston Churchill. And they scaled the Cenotaph — the sacred memorial to the nation’s fallen soldiers — to rip down the Union Jack. As the night progressed, a mob of 50 demonstrators — many wearing full-face balaclavas — attacked the car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, denting its doors and pelting it with paint bombs. To anyone standing outside Parliament, amid riot police, injured students and plumes of smoke, one thing became clear: London was burning.

Why was London “burning”? Because Britain’s parliament had “passed a bill to triple university tuition fees to $15,000” per year.

 

Europeans, Bill Maher claimed during the aforementioned interview, possess a “sort of wisdom and that savvy, and they don’t get excited.” This would presumably be news to the French. In October of 2005, rioters in Paris started two months of unrest, after two black men who were attempting to escape arrest died in an electrical power substation. During the initial turmoil, agitators threw Molotov cocktails and shot live rounds at police, whom they promised to “kill.” Later, the discord spread to 274 separate French jurisdictions, and arson became rife. Almost 9,000 vehicles were burned. Just under 3,000 people were arrested. Two men were killed. One hundred and twenty-six firefighters and police officers were injured. The violence was echoed in serious disturbances in France in  2006, 2009, 2013, and2014 . Over that period there was similar discord in Canada ; in Germany; in Australia ; in Italy ; and repeatedly in Great Britain and even in Scandinavia. How have the tumults in these “any other countries” been covered in America? Again: In much the same  way as  have been  the riots in Ferguson.

 

Outside of narrow circumstances that are tricky to hypothesize, rioting is an unmitigated ill — a breakdown of trust, of order, and of civil society that all enlightened people should resist. Insofar as the United States is the venue for such behavior, it reflects poorly on the country, and, for the most part, reveals that there is room for improvement here — as, human nature being immutable, there always will be. What there is little room for, by contrast, is flippant equating of the free world’s leading nation with the tribal, backwards, war-torn nightmares of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. There are riots in Missouri; but  Iraq is still a long way away.

 

— Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.

http://tracking.etapestry.com/t/28735529/655696982/62539828/0/29677/

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News  8/26/2014

From idyllic to barbaric

This week finds us at another idyllic spot along the McKenzie River on the west flanks of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, serenaded 24/7 by the gently whooshing white water of premier class I, II and III rapids. It is hardly swim-able at 42 to 46 degrees (McKenzie’s source waters, Clear Lake, are fed by snowmelt and underground springs of snowmelt for a mid-summer bone-chilling 39 degrees). However, with neoprene booties and splash jackets, guided floating on the river becomes a nearly 3-hour thrill ride. Our guide, Dennis, like many recreation workers, is also employed at Hoodoo ski area and skis at Mt. Bachelor so we’ll have another friend to look for.

In yet another mostly Internet-free zone (yes for Barb’s smart phone; no for my notebook), we would remain blissfully unaware of the news but for having radio with hourly reports, and talk show hosts. Apparently, the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, has continued, mostly absent provable, verifiable facts substituted for with rumors, accusations, word-of-mouth and, well, simply lies about what happened when 18-year-old Mr. Brown was shot dead by police Officer Wilson.

My thoughts are informed not only by the short top-of-the-hour news segments, but also by descriptions of copycat, repetitive mainstream media (MSM) reporting. Likewise, I consider the information ignored by the MSM but provided by talk radio. I recall other incidents, particularly the Trayvon Martin shooting, when considering the mob psychology of rushing to judgment, blind belief in rumors, and negative emotions that provide a fertile stew for violence. More importantly, the truthful account by Mr. Zimmerman of his altercation with Martin proved accurate. I believe Officer Wilson’s account of what led to shooting Brown will likely be borne out by facts.

I am also reminded of Ann Coulter’s book, “Demonic,” about the predominantly leftist and Democrat use of mobs. Make no mistake—peaceably gathering is a Constitutional right but that can still give rise to mob-ism that slides into or encourages violence, if only by outsiders from distant areas as has happened in Ferguson (coming from New York and Oakland, even). Such is the face of evil, hence Coulter’s appropriation of the term “Demonic.”

First, I reliably take the side of law enforcement whenever there is any doubt or conflicting statements by witnesses because I believe that police carry out their responsibilities with exceptional skill and attention to law and procedures—exceptions must be proven and punished. I don’t allow despicable, racist police practices from the distant past and far-off, mostly Southern, locales to color my perceptions of the Ferguson shooting. I condemn activist inciters of racial animosity that make thinly veiled, self-serving, pleas to protesters.

Every officer-involved shooting is investigated and usually found justified—not because of bias but because law enforcers are professional and well trained. MSM reporters often exhibit far less professionalism and training—and can get people killed for it—when they promote unproven allegations without including balancing conflicting reports. Also, they often fail to keep a healthy dose of skepticism over anecdotal statements by parties with a potentially agenda-driven desire to inflame mobs of protesters.

In this case, it’s quite rare that black men are shot by white officers; black men, women and children are shot and killed by other black men by the dozens, even hundreds over weekends throughout any given year in our cities. Officers and deputies have been shot with their own guns dozens of times by “unarmed” suspects of various races. Unjustified officer-on-civilian shootings happen, unfortunately, but they are the exceptions. It’s also very rare that a person is subjected to “Tasing,” pepper spray, tear gas, the blunt end of a nightstick or the display, let alone use, of the officer’s firearm, when politely complying with the officer’s requests or instructions.

I concluded that Trayvon Martin was a drug-using thug and punk, as did honest African-Americans, based on his own voluminous Facebook posts as well as testimony from his female friend in court and in subsequent interviews. I likewise believe Michael Brown to be a drug-using thug and punk who wrote his own death sentence by assaulting Wilson, grabbing the officer’s gun and ultimately taunting Officer Wilson just before charging him in an apparently threatening manner. When the first shots failed to stop the 6-foot 4-inch, 300-pound behemoth, Wilson understandably shot the head of the man rushing him with malintent. That’s how I see it.

News media, under pressure from the Obama/Holder racialist Justice Department, delayed the release of indisputable video footage showing Brown robbing a convenience store of the kind of cigars preferred for creating marijuana “blunts,” and assaulting the clerk/owner on the way out. Brown had pot in his system. Witnesses and the hospital corroborate the officer’s account of Brown punching and injuring Wilson, Wilson drawing on Brown, and Brown charging and getting himself fatally shot by Wilson.

That violent, barbaric attempt on Officer Wilson’s life has been the pretext for barbaric rioting by a hysterical minority of black citizens. Society ought to be asking other questions: Where was Brown’s father? Is this how his mother raised him? Where’s the similar outrage for the predominantly black victims of violent, young black men?

Obama: I'll 'Seize' Opportunity to Use Executive Powers

(Dennis Brack/UPI/Landov)

By Melanie Batley

President Barack Obama has defended his use of executive action despite intense criticism, and said he intends to seize every opportunity to use it going forward on a range of issues he believes congressional Republicans are obstructing.

During a wide-ranging press conference Wednesday, the president signaled he would take more action on issues such as tax reform and immigration, and vowed to "scour our authorities" seeking opportunities to act "wherever I have the legal authorities to make progress," The Hill reported.


"The American people don't want me standing around twiddling my thumbs waiting for Congress to do something," he added.

The president did however acknowledge he does not have a "green light" to unilaterally act on his political agenda, and that the administration was "going to make sure every time we take one of these steps we are working within the confines of my executive power."

"I'm bound by the Constitution. I'm bound by separation of powers. There are some things we can't do," Obama said. "I don't have a green light. What I am consistently going to do is, wherever I have the legal authorities to make progress on behalf of middle-class Americans … I'm going to seize those opportunities."

Critics have blasted the president for executive overreach, in some cases insisting his actions qualify as impeachable offenses and a violation of his oath of office to faithfully execute the laws of Congress.

Congressional Republicans are suing the president for abuse of office, and the lawsuit specifically focuses on his use of executive action to overturn elements of the Affordable Care Act legislation. GOP lawmakers have also criticized the president for actions he has taken on immigration law.

But criticism has also extended beyond the Beltway.

Former Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, for example, said on Fox and Friends Thursday that a number of the president's executive orders have trampled constitutional liberties and constituted impeachable offenses. He also warned that future executive actions on immigration could "divide the nation."

In an opinion piece recently, Napolitano said, "President Obama has taken the concept of discretion and so distorted it, and has taken the obligation of faithful enforcement and so rejected it, that his job as chief law enforcer has become one of incompetent madness or chief lawbreaker," he wrote.

National Review correspondent John Fund also made the case that the president has violated his oath of office with offenses that qualify as the basis of impeachment.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-executive-power/2014/08/07/id/587384#ixzz39ljeVZ4s
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http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-executive-power/2014/08/07/id/587384/

OBAMA’S MAP OF MISREADING: A COMMENT

OBAMA’S MAP OF MISREADING: A COMMENT

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN BARACK OBAMA, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

I asked the person who is perhaps the most worldly wise man I know if he would comment on Obama’s interview with Obama apostle Tom Friedman as related yesterday in the Times article “Obama on the world.” Noting the stupidity of Obama’s comments to Friedman, and Obama’s incessant yammering, I asked my acquaintance what he made of the whole production. He responded with the following comment, which I thought readers might find of interest:

I’ve wondered about this a lot, way before Tom Friedman’s report of this conversation. I’m not sure I’ve figured it out, but I think I’m getting close. Both James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. separately and in other contexts said something about “ignorance allied with power” being the worst imaginable combination.

I think with Obama it starts with ignorance which in his formative years became a required doctrine of the intelligentsia when it came to understanding the way the world works in matters of international security; to be considered politically correct you had to spurn and despise such painfully developed concepts and practices as the balance of power, the necessity of using strength and diplomacy in tandem, etc.

This was allied with a personal drive for High Moralism, the felt need to build a castle around yourself behind a moat of 12-foot thick walls from behind which you could shoot moral arrows at everyone else to demonstrate your superiority and quickly destroy any emerging criticism of yourself. So from this position of invincible ignorance allied with moral perfection and then allied with power, you could become able to cross a line in history to reach a new world shaped by your conviction of your perfected sensibility.

This would mean, 1.) taking the US out of its despicable role of world leadership, which has been immoral and has caused almost all the world’s problems over at least the past century, and 2.) “Transforming” American into a country moral enough to be worthy of you, a kind of big Belgium. As the wicked of the world have refused to fall into line behind this vision, it has made the president increasingly sour and feeling put upon.

At this point he has been forced to do something like take a presidential decision of the kind that all previous presidents have known they would have to take– the “hard decisions” recognized by the president’s hero Reinhold Niebuhr but never recognized by the president. So he has been forced by events to do it. But he didn’t want to do it. And he keeps making it clear that he is determined not to do it in an effective way, to assure our enemies of the many things he will never do, and to sulk about it for the foreseeable future as he relates his unappreciated fate to those who share his feelings, like Tom Friedman.

He then adds a parenthetical postscript: “(this is not unique to the president, it can be seen all through White House personnel and among so many of the younger generations who have never actually had a job or actually dome anything connected to the real world)”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/08/obamas-map-of-misreading-a-comment.php