Tag: Syrian President Bashar Assad

The Tyranny of the Minority: What Happens When Our System of Checks and Balances is Bypassed

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

th (15)Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.- Thomas Jefferson

Politico.com reports that

Buoyed by the success of his nuclear deal with Iran, President Barack Obama is preparing to move aggressively on other long-delayed priorities, including a major climate change summit this winter and his elusive quest to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

The National Security Council’s directorate of strategic planning has been quietly building an agenda of action items for the closing year of Obama’s presidency, in a White House that sees its work as far from complete, administration officials say.

“We have no intention of resting on our laurels,” said one senior administration official. “We have an ambitious foreign policy agenda that we’ll continue to pursue aggressively throughout the remainder of [the] fourth quarter of the administration.”

Part of that agenda includes striking a calmer post-Iran deal relationship with Israel — including a November visit to the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that officials announced on Friday.

Also high on the to-do list: completing a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal to which Congress gave “fast-track” approval in June; bolstering counter-terrorism partnerships in Asia and Africa; and putting U.S.-China relations on a firmer footing, a project that will include a state visit to Washington by Chinese President Xi Jingping this month.

As Obama’s presidency draws to a close, he will focus increasingly on the policies his successor will inherit after he’s gone, according to sources familiar with the administration’s thinking.

“The last 16 months actually can be very important not only for this president’s legacy, but for setting up the next president’s administration,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who is close to Obama foreign policy officials. “No matter what people say in campaigns, you’re most likely to see incremental change from administration to administration.”

Even as the Iran deal gets implemented in the months ahead, a potentially thorny process that will occupy significant bandwidth in the White House, Obama will shift his focus to climate.

An international climate summit kicks off at the end of November in Paris, where Obama hopes to find agreement on meaningful new limits on carbon gases. The summit is expected to be one focus of Xi’s visit.

Beneath the heady talk of agenda-setting, however, is the grim reality of a global stage where multiple fires burn despite Washington’s efforts to extinguish them. Obama could spend much of his final year performing triage on issues like the Islamic State, Syria’s civil war and the conflict in Ukraine.

Officials are also braced for possible new crises, including in Afghanistan, as U.S. troops withdraw from a country whose government and security forces remain fragile.

One of Obama’s post-Iran deal projects has already run into trouble as Secretary of State John Kerry has begun new diplomacy to find a political resolution to Syria’s civil war. Russia, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has recently sent military personnel and equipment to the country—a dramatic escalation that has surprised and angered Obama and Kerry and may derail that project.

“We continue to believe that there needs to be a political solution to the conflict in Syria, and that support for the Assad regime, particularly in a military way, is unhelpful to achieving that goal,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Friday.

And although the White House been working on a new plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, a key promise from Obama’s 2008 campaign, it has been bedeviled by old obstacles, including political resistance to the transfer of detainees from Cuba onto U.S. soil.

Some Pentagon and intelligence officials remain deeply wary of freeing other detainees cleared for release, and some top officials are skeptical that the camp can be shut down as long as a Republican Congress remains in power.

When our Founding Fathers sat down to provide form and substance to the laws and procedures for governing this new country, which they had fought and won a bloody war over, by pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, they were very aware of the price of tyranny.

They determined that this new nation would be a Constitutional Republic, having had their fill of monarchies.

In order to ensure that no leader of this new nation would go mad with power, and become a tyrannical despot, our Founders set up a System of Checks and Balances, overseen by Three Branches of Government: the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial, with each branch having a distinct and LIMITED  role.

In an effort to keep this simple (in deference to any Modern American Liberals, who may be reading), here is a description of their powers:

The Legislative Branch is given the powers to make the laws. It has the following checks over the Executive Branch:

  • May override presidential vetoes with a two-thirds vote
  • Has the power over the purse strings to actually fund any executive actions
  • May remove the president through impeachment
  • Senate approves treaties
  • Senate approves presidential appointments

The Legislative Branch has the following checks over the Judicial Branch:

  • Creates lower courts

The Executive Branch is given the power to carry out the laws. It has the following checks over the Legislative Branch:

  • Veto power
  • Ability to call special sessions of Congress
  • Can recommend legislation
  • Can appeal to the people concerning legislation and more

The Executive Branch has the following checks over the Judicial Branch:

  • President appoints Supreme Court and other federal judges

The Judicial Branch is given the power to interpret the laws. It has the following checks over the Executive Branch:

  • Judges, once appointed for life, are free from controls from the executive branch
  • Courts can judge executive actions to be unconstitutional through the power of judicial review

 The Judicial Branch has the following checks over the Legislative Branch:

  • Courts can judge legislative acts to be unconstitutional.

The situation, which we as a nation, find ourselves in today, is one which our Founding Fathers sought valiantly to avoid.

We are suffering under an Imperious Presidency.

One in which the President of the United States does not care about the “Will of the People”, but, rather, is intent on implementing and enforcing his own Far Left Policial Ideology, resulting in a “Tyranny of the Minority”.

For example, the “victory” of The Iran Deal, which the Liberal website, i.com, was lauding in the article posted earlier in this blog, is one which, according to a poll from Pew Research, is supported by only 215 of Americans.

That’s a victory?

Climate Change is the Fool’s Gold of the “Politically Hip”. It is the biggest Con Job since P.T. Barham hung up a sign to fool the rubes, which read

This way to the Egress.

The Syria/ISIS/Middle East Situation is an erupting volcano of Radical Islam, which endangers the whole civilized world. And, make no mistake, boys and girls, it is Obama’s responsibility.

However, the situation which our nation finds itself in, could have been avoided…if there had been EFFECTIVE POLITICAL OPPOSTION to the plans and Machiavellian Machinations of Barack Hussein Obama.

Like the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, who accompanied Dorothy down that fabled Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City of Oz, if the Congressional Republican Elite, led by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, had only had heart, brains, and courage, they could have used our System of Checks and Balances to thwart, or, at least, to slow down, all of Obama’s Plans, which have succeeded in, literally, “radically changing” the Shining City Upon a Hill, into something almost unrecognizable.

It would have helped if they had found some spines, too.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

 

Al Qaeda’s “On the Run”, Alright. Right Into the Arms of ISIS.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

AFBrancoObamaISIS9242014In what amounts to a new “Axis of Evil”, two of America’s sworn enemies have now joined forces.

According to the Associated Press,

Militant leaders from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida gathered at a farm house in northern Syria last week and agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander have told The Associated Press.

Such an accord could present new difficulties for Washington’s strategy against the IS group. While warplanes from a U.S.-led coalition strike militants from the air, the Obama administration has counted on arming “moderate” rebel factions to push them back on the ground. Those rebels, already considered relatively weak and disorganized, would face far stronger opposition if the two heavy-hitting militant groups now are working together.

IS – the group that has seized nearly a third of Syria and Iraq with a campaign of brutality and beheadings this year – and al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, have fought each other bitterly for more than a year to dominate the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Associated Press reported late last month on signs that the two groups appear to have curtailed their feud with informal local truces. Their new agreement, according to the sources in rebel groups opposed to both IS and Nusra Front, would involve a promise to stop fighting and team up in attacks in some areas of northern Syria.

Cooperation, however, would fall short of unifying the rival groups, and experts believe any pact between the two sides could easily unravel. U.S. intelligence officials have been watching the groups closely and say a full merger is not expected soon – if ever. A U.S. official with access to intelligence about Syria said the American intelligence community has not seen any indications of a shift in the two groups’ strategy, but added that he could not rule out tactical deals on the ground. The official insisted on anonymity because he said he was not authorized to speak publicly about the subject.

According to a Syrian opposition official speaking in Turkey, the meeting took place Nov. 2 in the town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, starting at around midnight and lasting until 4 a.m. The official said the meeting was closely followed by members of his movement, and he is certain that an agreement was reached. The official said about seven top militant leaders attended.

A second source, a commander of brigades affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army who is known as Abu Musafer, said he also had learned that high-ranking members of Nusra and IS met on Nov. 2. He did not disclose the exact location, but said it was organized by a third party and took place in an area where the FSA is active.

About al-Qaeda...

The group was founded in approximately 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and Muhammad Atef — the latter a native Egyptian and a onetime member of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al Qaeda’s overriding objective is to establish a worldwide caliphate governing all the earth via the dictates of Islamic Law. Crucial to the achievement of that goal is the destruction of America by any means necessary. As one Al Qaeda Training Manual makes explicitly clear, violence is the preferred method of dealing with the enemy:

“Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they [always] have been by pen and gun, by word and bullet, by tongue and teeth.”

The manual further exhorts jihadists to “pledge … to make their [the infidels’] women widows and their children orphans … to slaughter them like lambs and let the [rivers] flow with their blood.”

According to Abu Musafer, two decisions were reached: First, to halt infighting between Nusra and IS and second, for the groups together to open up fronts against Kurdish fighters in a couple of new areas of northern Syria.

The fact is, Obama believes that everything can be handled through “Community Organizing”.

If you remember, Obama was the first American Presidential Candidate to campaign for our Presidency, outside of our nation. All of the Main Stream Media fawned over his European campaigning as a brilliant move, while Americans were bumfuzzled at the media spectacle, trying to figure out why he would give campaign speeches to people who could not even vote for him.

Then, after he became President, one  of the first things Obama did was to go on a World Apology Tour,culminating with an “Address to the Muslim World” at the University of Cairo, in which he lauded the contributions of Muslims to world civilization and to the history of the united States of America, even though the population of Muslims in America, was only around 1% at the time.

Yeah…our Revolutionary War Hero and First President of the United States of America, Mohammed Washington…that’s the ticket!

Since then, Obama has continued to “reach out” to the Muslim World in an attempt to “Community Organize” them, even to the detriment of the country and its citizenry, whom he is supposed to be protecting.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens remains unavailable for comment.

In his zeal to appease his American voting base, and those whom he has worked so hard to “organize”, Obama pulled our troops out of the unstable, Radical Muslim nation of Iraq, in a “premature evacuation”.

Proudly announcing that “al Qaeda was on the run”, Scooter (my pet name for Obama) turned his attention to giving campaign speeches and rallying his Liberal Base, even though he was a President presiding over a tanking economy, with over 92 million Americans already gone from our workforce.

Then, it happened.

ISIS/ISIL, a Radical Muslim Terrorist Organization, with over 32 thousand adherents, invaded Iraq, killing innocent Muslims and Christians, and threatening to flood Baghdad, by blowing up an essential dam on the Euphrates River.

Obama sprang into “Community Organizing” mode once again. He sent “military advisors” to Iraq, and sent Secretary of State John “I served in Vietnam” Kerry on a European and Middle Tour to trying to get a consensus to support our actions, and to try to form a coalition to assist in the “prosecution of ISIS/ISIL, in order for Obama to keep his promise to his Far Left Supporters that there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq.

Think of it as General Custer sending the Scouts first into Little Big Horn, while he sat on his horse, watching from a hill.

Yeah. The Europeans wanted no part of it, either.

However, some of the Middle Eastern Nations decided that they would join in, for their own self-protecting, mercenary reasons (Remember the Hessians in the Revolutionary War?).

Heck,Obama has even been negotiating with the Head Ayatollah in Iran, (the same country who is developing a nuclear bomb, in order to annihilate us) trying to get them to side with us against ISIS.

President Barack Hussein Obama’s International “Street Cred” has been tarnished beyond repair after the abysmal consequences, as regards the stability of the Middle East, of  his failed Foreign Policy of “Smart Power!”

The terrifying results of Obama’s attempt at “Community Organizing” the Muslim World, including the lost of life of both innocent civilians and of America’s Brightest and best, which has dwarfed the war casualties which occurred under his predecessor, President George W. Bush, now have begun to arrived at our own shores, with Korans and prayer rugs being found at our open Southern Border and honor killings and attacks by Radical Muslims, labelled as “work place violence” by the Obama Administration.

It is time for Obama to stop being the world’s  “Community Organizer” and to perform his duties as the President of the United States.

Before it is too late.

Until He Comes,

KJ