[HotAir] Trump’s popularity has increased since he was elected president. In a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll just before the election, 37 percent of voters said they had a favorable view of Trump, while 61 percent reported an unfavorable view of the then-candidate. After the election, the number of people reporting an unfavorable view of Trump dropped 15 points, to 46 percent. Trump also saw a nine point increase in voters saying they had a favorable view of him, also to 46 percent.
Trump’s favorability among voters has reached new highs since he became president-elect," said Morning Consult Cofounder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "This honeymoon phase is common for new presidents. For example, Obama saw about a 20 point swing in his favor following the 2008 election."
The poll consisted of 1,885 voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
[Free Beacon] Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters said Monday night that President Obama has been the worst foreign policy president of his lifetime.
Peters is 64 years old.
Fox News host Eric Bolling asked Peters about the Iran nuclear deal and what Obama would do to stop President-elect Donald Trump from ending it when he takes office in January.
"President Obama, and speaking without hyperbole, has been the most disastrous foreign policy president of my lifetime or yours, Eric, and now he’s not thinking this through," Peters said.
"He’s so desperate, so fervently crazed to preserve this inept nuke deal with Iran, that again he’s not thinking it through," Peters continued. "He’s trying to box Trump in."
Peters went on to say that Obama’s poor policies with Iran will leave Trump no other option down the road than to use military force. He believes Obama is wasting the peaceful options that the United States once had to effectively deal with Iran.
"Military option is all Obama is leaving the next president, and with the Iranians running wild across the Middle East, destructive in every country‐Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, and elsewhere, in Lebanon, in Gaza‐we have no options left but to pull triggers, and that’s sad," Peters said. "What a legacy."
He added that it is too late to reinstitute sanctions on Iran in order to apply non-military pressure.
#2
It doesn't help to keep committing to more and more entangling 'alliances'. You can only divert or distract chaos in the long run at great expense, but you can not stop it from playing out. Choose wisely and within your resources. He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing. There would be less disasters if there had been less commitments in the first place.
#3
Grom, IMO Peters is correct - Obama has been a worse foreign policy President than even Carter & Johnson, whose failures were large but not broad-based, like Obama's.
#4
I would have to vote for Carter as the most disastrous. He didn't back the Shah, lost Iran, apologized to the Ayatollah, picked a fight with the Soviets in Afghanistan by supporting the very same AQ idiots we are fighting now... Carter was the liberal incompetent genesis for most of what is troubling us now. Not that Obama is any better...Carter was worse.
#6
LBJ killed a helluva lot more people than Obama and Carter combined. Perhaps off topic but his domestic policy, his so called Great Society, was a disaster that we are still living with. Slimy mother fucker.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/22/2016 10:58 Comments ||
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#7
Carter and Obama were dithering, blithering incompetents. LBJ was powerful, forceful, determined and for a long time a lot of people actually believed him.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/22/2016 11:07 Comments ||
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#8
Despite what the MSM says to the contrary, Clinton wasn't such great shakes as a POTUS. His ineptitude led to the financial collapse and 911. Also there was Mogadishu, Rwanda, Waco and Ruby Ridge and Hillary Care. He didn't take out Bin Laden when he had the chance. And there was PeckerGate.
[Defense One] Who is Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s new national security advisor? There is no single or simple answer. The Flynn you’ve probably heard of, the one who hitched his wagon to Trump for-President, seems intent on convincing the world that he harbors a smoldering animus against Islam. He is a man whose worldview the American Conservative has described as "warped." But there once was a Flynn who resembles the current man barely, if at all.
We can find this earlier Flynn in the papers he wrote while serving as an intelligence officer and in the relationships he formed with special operators working the tough fight in Afghanistan. Through these lenses emerges an innovator who sought to update intelligence collection and dissemination practices to comport with modern technology; an intelligence professional who emphasized building local ties with--yes--Muslim leaders to undermine the insurgent cause; and a manager who pushed hard for big changes, alienating entrenched power brokers in the intelligence community.
In 2010, Flynn was the director of intelligence for joint international forces in Afghanistan, working for top war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Together, they reshaped how operators acquired information and intelligence to target enemies, emerging with a process sometimes called F3EAD, for Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, and Disseminate.
"They are the folks that ’industrialized’ the targeting process of F3EAD," said Stuart Bradin, a retired Army colonel who worked with Flynn in Afghanistan.
Flynn distilled the new ideas in a 2010 white paper, "Fixing Intelligence", coauthored for the Center for New American Security, or CNAS. Its thrust: share more intelligence with and among with more operators at the battalion and company level, and do it much faster.
"Currently, information this basic to a coordinating a successful counterinsurgency literally is inaccessible to the people who need it most. This failure not only jeopardizes an operation, but also exposes international efforts to ridicule for their ineptitude," Flynn wrote.
In the paper, Flynn argued that the military should rely more on open-source and data and much less on classified and expensive intel.
#1
"The Flynn you’ve probably heard of, the one who hitched his wagon to Trump for-President, seems intent on convincing the world that he harbors a smoldering animus against Islam."
That, right there, is reason enough to cheer.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
11/22/2016 10:05 Comments ||
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#2
And there it is, the accusation that he is a political general, bete noir of the fighting soldier. (And sailor, marine, coast guard, and airmen of both sexes.). But will it stick?
h/t Instapundit
Melania Trump has done the nation a great service by deciding to maintain Trump Tower as her full-time residence and not to move to the White House any time soon. But her resistance shouldn’t stop there. Now is as good a time as any to eliminate the ceremonial office of the "first lady," that abhorrent honorific we apply to the president’s wife, and encourage the first spouse to live like an ordinary citizen. All we need is for Melania to agree.
Yes, defund the ridiculously large staff that currently earns upward of $1.5 million a year serving Michelle Obama; abolish the federally funded bully pulpit from which the presidential spouses have historically advocated for healthy eating, literacy, child welfare, anti-drug programs, mental health issues and beautification of highways. The president’s spouse isn’t a specimen of American royalty. By giving her a federal budget and nonstop press coverage, we endorse a pernicious kind of neo-nepotism that says, pay special attention to the person not because she’s earned it or is inherently worthy of our notice but because of who she’s related to by marriage.
#1
We have gotten a little silly about the trappings of office. Gone are the days when the Trumans got in their car and headed out. Truman. The Presidency has been turned into something with all the trappings of a monarchy. Had Hillary won the election, it hard to imagine the jokes that would ensue about Slick Willy and the Office of the First Lady.
Years ago there was a popular movie titled A Message to Garcia. The plot went like this: "With tension increasing between the United States and Spain (which then ruled Cuba), President William McKinley desired to initiate communication with the Cuban rebels, who could prove a valuable ally in case of war with Spain. McKinley asked Colonel Arthur L. Wagner to suggest an officer to seek Calixto García, one of three top commanders of the rebels. Wagner suggested Andrew Rowan, a lieutenant, who then traveled to Cuba via Jamaica, dressed as a traveling sportsman.
...In the aftermath of the 2016 election, almost everyone wants to take a message to Garcia, now billeted in the Trump Tower. Unfortunately Lt Andrew Rowan has long since been gathered to his fathers and can no longer beat his way past the fever swamps of Manhattan. So Leo Linbeck's letter to Trump, now in my hand, has go to Garcia by Internet. I am perhaps not simply a messenger but someone who occasionally expounded on the same themes.
Dear President-elect Trump,
I’m gonna try to keep this brief, because we’re both pretty busy with important matters ‐ you with filling positions in your cabinet, me with cleaning the kitchen and helping the kids with their homework and school projects.
I want to reach out to you to make sure you remember why you won, and don’t get distracted. It’s easy to do after pulling off a stunning upset.
You’re getting a lot of advice right now from a lot of different people, and magnanimity in victory is a classic American character trait, so please do keep talking to everyone. And if you should pull some of these folks into your administration, even better. Some of them are exceptionally talented people who will help you govern.
But here’s the thing: your supporters didn’t vote for you to "make Washington work." They voted for you to "drain the swamp" ‐ not to put the "best and brightest" in charge of making decisions, but to stop making so many decisions in Washington DC.
Look, I get it. There are some decisions that can only be made in Washington: military, foreign affairs, post offices, voting laws ‐ you know, those areas specifically enumerated in the Constitution as amended.
The rest of the decisions made in Washington DC ‐ in health care, education, labor laws, environment, energy, and campaign finance, just to name a few obvious areas ‐ have no business being decided there. All of these decisions should be moved back to the states. That is how you drain the swamp.
[Gorka Brief] I spoke at a conference at the Virginia Military Institute on 3 November about the reality of the future of war, the nature of irregular warfare that in the past 150 years has been more common than traditional state-vs-state warfare, the threat of ISIS, and the need for a real strategy.
h/t Instapundit
[NYPost] From transactivists to #blacklivesmatter, social justice groups have taken a serious shellacking over the past 10 days. And despite years of indulgence by a pliant left, the election of Donald Trump suggests that the current era of identity politics is rapidly reaching its expiration date.
For many, it won’t come soon enough. Enabled by the academy and coddled by Hillary Clinton, social justice warriors have been given free rein over a liberal elite too scared -- or simply too lazy -- to know any better.
Fueled by a mix of intolerance and entitlement, the left has cultivated a culture of closed-mindedness that’s left little room for individual thinking and intelligent discourse. Shaming skeptics and silencing critics, they railed against microaggressions and demanded safe spaces. But along the way, the social justice crowd forgot one key thing -- no space is ever safer than the American ballot box.
#1
The only thing that will end identity politics is to dry up the funding sources that keep it alive.
End affirmative action. See to it that the high court reverses or revises Griggs vs Duke Power. Shrink the size of the government "work" force at all levels to pre-Great Society levels. Defund the left whenever possible in academia and other areas of public grants and subsidies.
When being part of a victim group that bullies the public at large, or being an overt anti-Christian bigot, or advocating for a Soviet style society, or indoctrinating students to do any of these with public education money, etc., earn you a one-way trip to economic oblivion, I think you'll see the SJW autocrats slink away to find some other way to feed, clothe, and house themselves.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/22/2016 5:18 Comments ||
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#2
SJW autocrats slink away to find some other way to feed, clothe, and house themselves.
"They are welcome to starve - better if they do. But they don't"
#3
#1 "Shrink the size of the government "work" force at all levels to pre-Great Society levels. Defund the left whenever possible in academia and other areas of public grants and subsidies."
Posted by no mo uro
Great post - perfect place to start and it doesn't cost us a thing...
[Washington Examiner] Proponents of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline say the Native American tribe protesting the project isn't all that hung up on whether the pipeline will use sacred land, and is really just looking for a bigger cut of the revenue.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has claimed that the project has encroached on its land, damaged sacred sites and would potentially harm a major source of their drinking water by going under Lake Oahe.
Sources privy to the discussions say a number of offers had been made to the tribe, including the installation of water quality sensors, construction of a fresh water storage facility to store water in case of a pipeline leak, and other means of ensuring water quality. The developers also offered to create a rapid response team to respond to environmental accidents, including emergency vehicles provided to Standing Rock Tribal members, according to an email from one source involved in the discussions.
But what continued to throw a wall up in the discussions was the tribe's demand to receive a fee for shipping the oil.
#2
I noticed a high school classmate of mine went there to express solidarity 'with her native brothers and sisters' (she's of French-American extraction). She didn't stick around for the firehoses. For an unwise woman, it was a smart move.
#4
They may be an extortin g bunch of assholes, but: "Sources privy to the discussions say a number of offers had been made to the tribe, including the installation of water quality sensors, construction of a fresh water storage facility to store water in case of a pipeline leak, and other means of ensuring water quality. The developers also offered to create a rapid response team to respond to environmental accidents, including emergency vehicles provided to Standing Rock Tribal members,"
seems like pretty smart measures to start off with
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/22/2016 9:18 Comments ||
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#5
The protests on the original issues were largely found by the general population to be without merit, or at least not enough to get worked up over. So in order to gain more public notice and outrage they moved the protest off public land onto private land - a move intended to provoke a response. It did, the people who owned the land, and the heavy equipment on it the SJWs torched, reasonably demanded the law protect them. Of course THAT response was the whole point, allowing photo ops 'proving' their victimhood and the cruel evilness of the authorities. It still hasn't gotten them enough public notice and sympathy though, so --- more rock and Molotov cocktail throwing, more truck burning, more forced arrests, with each protester hoping it's a different one who finally becomes the 'martyr' they need.
#6
When I was working in the oilfield up in North Dakota, two of the wells were on tribal land. The tool pusher, who was an American Indian explained that any rig operating on tribal land had to carry 2-3 'extra' employees from the tribe. They of course never actually went to the site, they simply got paid. He had some very unkind words to say about the practice and the people participating in it, since he felt it reflected badly on him.
#7
Silentbrick - that kind of labor practice is in force in virtually all our Third World operations: we have to hire a full staff of locals, who mostly don't even have to show up, and then have the work done by our expats (or done in Houston.) It's not as bad as it used to be in the countries that have been in the business a generation or two, as they now produce a good number of excellent white collar workers.
#9
I suspect a bit of Middle East money is helping to finance the protesters. If so I hope it drags on. Always happy to see bad people throw their money away.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.