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MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough is waking up to the fact that despite all the hype that accompanied President Barack Obama when he made his 2008 presidential run, he wasn’t ready for primetime.

“Barack Obama has proven over the past five years that he wasn’t ready to be president of the United States,” Scarborough said on his show Tuesday, according to Newsmax. “And he proves it still today.”

Scarborough said Obama “came out of nowhere” as a freshman senator, and “a couple years later, people elected him president of the United States.” 

Obama served less than a decade in the Illinois Senate with a less-than-stellar record that included numerous instances of voting “present.”

He followed that distinguished service with less than a full term in the U.S. Senate, also unimpressive. Most of his time there seemed to be spent running for the presidency.

Yet, solely on the basis that “Barack Obama was against the [Iraq] war,” the Democratic Party “went out and sold him like he was a bag of potato chips, they marketed him [and] he becomes president of the United States,” Scarborough said.

To illustrate his point, the TV host challenged guest Donny Deutsch to “name me a major piece of legislation that Barack Obama passed in the United States Senate, that would suggest that he knew how to work in the United States Senate and would be an effective president of the United States.”

Neither Deutsch nor any of Scarborough’s other guests could.

“You have people that come out of nowhere and get in the Senate. They don’t want to be in the Senate. They don’t want to work for the people that hired them. Immediately, they start running for president of the United States a week after they get to the Senate,” Scarborough said, referring not only to Obama but also U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who Scarborough described Wednesday as a “phony narcissist.”

Scarborough’s comparison of Cruz’s meteoric rise to Obama’s is misplaced.

The president has demonstrated time after time that he tends to take the path of least resistance. When he spoke against the Iraq war, he was among the majority of lawmakers — including many in his own party.

Cruz’s crusade to defund Obamacare is in opposition to his own party leaders. An aide to U.S. Sen. John McCain said that his boss “f**king hates” Cruz, according to The Daily Caller, and The New York Times reported that U.S. Peter King, R-N.Y., called Cruz a “fraud” who promotes “government terrorism.”

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz described Cruz, a former student, as “off-the-charts brilliant.” Obama has steadfastly refused to release any of his college records.

Prior to being a lawmaker, Obama worked in a law firm and as a community organizer. Cruz actually ran things, directing the Texas Solicitor General’s Office for five years, serving as his state’s first Hispanic solicitor general and the youngest in the United States.

Cruz also served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, and in the private sector, Cruz led the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius law firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice while a partner there.

But did I mention? Obama was also a community organizer.

“You can go one after another after another,” Scarborough said. “This doesn’t work. The Barack Obama way does not work.”

I agree, but Cruz is not a part of this ilk.

In 2008, GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was more qualified for the presidency. She had successfully run a city and a state. Obama, on the other hand, had only run for office.

A special operations team, geared up and about to offer assistance to the Americans trapped at the besieged foreign mission in Benghazi, Libya, was ordered to “hold in place,” a witness testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Thursday.

Adm. Mike Mullen, a member of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, testified that although technically no “stand down” order was sent to the special forces team, the unit was nonetheless ordered to “hold in place,” according to Breitbart News.

Breitbart reported:

Testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Admiral Mike Mullen said that the direction given to Special Operations Command Africa commander Lt. Col Gibson was to “hold in place” on the night of the attacks.

 

Gibson is the boss of Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya who had testified that a “stand down” order was given to Special Forces who wanted to help Americans who were under assault in Libya.

Whether there was a stand down order has been part of an ongoing debate between administration officials and those who were in Libya during the attack. Those on the ground have vehemently insisted that a stand down order was issued. The administration has steadfastly denied it.

Let’s put an end to the semantics. Whether it was a “stand down” order or a “hold in place” order is of little consequence. It’s a distinction without a difference.

The result was the same. Americans who had every right to expect aid from their government were denied it, and four brave souls are dead. Still a “phony scandal?”

Earlier today, an important hearing regarding the attack on Benghazi was being held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The parents of the Benghazi heroes who died fighting to protect the US consulate were about to speak.

Then, in a turn of events that’s disgusting even by DC standards, most of the Democrats stood up and walked out. Apparently, they were either protesting or trying to show disrespect — either way, if there was any honor in their districts at all, this would end their careers.

A picture from Rep. Issa’s Twitter account and a list of the names of the congressmen who left is listed on this page. Disgusting. Spread this far and wide — their names should be known and shamed.

Here’s the image from Issa:

You have to admit, Issa has been fighting for the truth even without support from the GOP establishment. He might not be perfect, but he deserves recognition for his work on getting to the truth about Benghazi.

Here’s the list of people who walked out:

Carolyn Maloney, NY Danny Davis, IL Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC Gerald E. Connolly, VA Jim Cooper, TN John Tierney, MA Mark Pocan, WI Matt Cartwright, PA Michelle Lujan Grisham, NM Peter Welch, VT Stephen Lynch, MA Steven Horsford, NV Tammy Duckworth, IL Tony Cardenas, CA William Lacy Clay, MO

HT to WZ and the Gateway Pundit.

Remember, last week John Kerry stopped the Benghazi survivors from being even questioned by congress.

Earlier, Obama even hid the survivors and had them change their names with threats towards their families.

The entire idea of the cover up is to defend Obama and Hillary so they can remain unscathed from their illegal plan to arm Syrians through Libya and their workings with radical Islamic groups.

Here are 6 facts that show how absurd Hillary’s handling of the entire situation was. It’s disgusting.

Spread this article far and wide on Facebook and Twitter — their names should be known and shamed.

Forget Wal-Mart and skip your local gun show. The murderers of tomorrow will not be found wearing orange vests at your local sporting goods store. They won’t have NRA memberships or trophies on their walls.

You won’t find them in America. Look for them in Obamerica.

67% of firearm murders took place in the country’s 50 largest metro areas. The 62 cities in those metro areas have a firearm murder rate of 9.7, more than twice the national average. Among teenagers the firearm murder rate is 14.6 or almost three times the national average.

Those are the crowded cities of Obamerica. Those are the places with the most restrictive gun control laws and the highest crime rates. And many of them have been run by Democrats and their political machines for almost as long as they have been broken.

Obama won every major city in the election, except for Jacksonville and Salt Lake City. And the higher the death rate, the bigger his victory.

He won New Orleans by 80 to 17 where the murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. He won Detroit, where the murder rate of 53 per 100,000 people is the second highest in the country and twice as high as any country in the world, including the Congo and South Africa. He won it 73 to 26. And then he celebrated his victory in Chicago where the murder rate is three times the statewide average.

These places aren’t America. They’re Obamerica.

In 2006, the 54% of the population living in those 50 metro areas was responsible for 67% of armed killings nationwide. Those are disproportionate numbers especially when you consider that for the people living in most of those cities walking into a store and legally buying a gun is all but impossible.

Mayors of Obamerican cities blame guns because it’s easier than blaming people and now the President of Obamerica has turned to the same shameless tactic. The NRA counters that people kill people, but that’s exactly why Obamerican leaders would rather talk about the guns.

Chicago, the capital of Obamerica, is a city run by gangs and politicians. It has 68,000 gang members, four times the number of police officers. Chicago politicians solicit the support of gang members in their campaigns, accepting laundered contributions from them, hiring their members and tipping them off about upcoming police raids. And their biggest favor to the gang bosses is doing nothing about the epidemic of gang violence.

80% of Chicago’s murders are gang-related. But in 1999 when a bill came up in the Illinois State Senate to charge anyone carrying out a firearm attack on school property as an adult, a law that would have largely affected gang members, the future leader of Obamerica voted present. Had he not voted present, it is doubtful that he would have been reelected in an area where gang leaders wield a great deal of influence.

The majority of murders in the cities with the worst homicide rates are gang-related. And while it isn’t always possible to be certain whether a killing was gang-related, the majority of homicide victims in city after city have been found to have criminal records.

In 2010, there were 11,078 firearm homicides in the United States and over 2,000 known gang-related killings, over 90% of which are carried out with firearms. Since 1981, Los Angeles alone has had 16,000 gang related homicides. That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is what Obamerica looks like. It’s a place where life is cheap and illegal guns are as available as illegal drugs. It’s the war that we aren’t talking about, because it’s easier to talk about the inanimate objects being used to fight that war.

There are, as John Edwards said, two Americas. America is a country that runs pretty well. And then there’s Obamerica. Not all of Obamerica is broken, but a lot of it is. America does not have a gun violence problem. Obamerica does. And Obamerica has a gun violence problem for the same reason that it has a drug problem and a broken family problem.

Democratic leaders and machines, combined with social workers and justice crusaders have run Obamerica into the ground. Obamerican cities used to be the homes of industry and progress. Now they’re places where young Black and Hispanic men kill each other in growing numbers.

America does not need gun control. It is a mostly law-abiding place. And gun control cannot help Obamerica. Not when its murder rate is driven by gangs who have no trouble obtaining anything; whether it’s legal in the United States or not.

This country does not need to have a conversation about how many bullets should go in a clip. It does need to have a conversation about how many parents should go in a family. It needs to talk about the ghettos of Obamerica and have a serious conversation about broken families and generational dependency.

Obama has become a role model to millions of people in the black community. If anyone can address these problems, it’s him. But instead of trying to solve the problems of Obamerica, instead of doing something about the high levels of unemployment, the broken families and the glamorization of drug dealing and violent crime, he wimped out and picked a fight with rural America.

AIDS prevention was sabotaged by the claim that the disease was a general problem spreading through the population. It wasn’t. Neither is gun violence.

Adam Lanza is as much of a poster boy for gun violence, as Ryan White was for AIDS. A better poster boy for gun violence might be Jay-Z, who boasts of having been a drug dealer and claims to have shot his brother at the age of 12. The drug dealer to millionaire rapper is the Horatio Alger story of Obamerica. And Jay-Z can be seen partying with Obama.

If Obama really wants to get serious about gun violence, then all he has to do is turn to the man standing next to him. But Obama, like every Chicago politician before him, don’t want to end the violence. The death toll is profitable, not just for rappers writing bad poetry about dealing drugs and shooting rivals, but for the politicians atop that heap who score money and gain power by using the problems of Obamerica as some sort of call to conscience for the rest of the country.

That’s what Obama is doing now. Hiding behind Newtown and adorable little kids is the grim specter of Obamerica’s death toll. It’s buried inside the gruesome figures of how many Americans are shot each year issued as an indictment against the entire country in general and gun owners in particular. But those numbers are not an indictment of America. They are an indictment of Democratic mayors and liberal social policy. They are an indictment of Obama.

We need to set aside the same old tired social justice rhetoric and have a serious conversation about what is wrong with New Orleans, Detroit and Chicago. And we need to do it before it’s too late.

Poor old Barack – accused by so many last week as having been played by  Russia and Syria as he was attempting his level best to be a tough president, in  charge of not only the country but with his eye on the world.

He spoke, threw down the gauntlet with his “red-line” threat and expected  everyone to hop to.

Unfortunately, no one over there was scared, least of all the people who were  to be the target of his threats.

Wait – wait. I take that back.

Some people everywhere were scared, and a good number of them were Americans  who saw Obama’s threat against Syria as being a wide-open invitation to a real  war.

You know what they were thinking – military in the air and on the ground,  people shooting and getting shot and dying from that and from the bombs dropping  from the sky. Comparisons to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were rampant.

In the midst of all that was (and is) the threat of more of that poison gas  Syria finally admitted it has and the possibility of a nuke dropped into the mix  somewhere.

All in all, it was an ugly scenario, and for what?

Americans wanted to know, and when Barack Obama took to the TV cameras last  week, they expected the president of their country to present a masterful and  strong picture of what was going on and what would happen.

In other words, they wanted a leader.

I hope they weren’t holding their breath because, oh me, he did it again.  Fifteen minutes or so of scripted blather, devised to capture emotion about dead  children, framed with repeated personal pronouns – me, me, I, me, me – but which  essentially said – nothing.

When Obama was done, we knew no more about the crisis than before he opened  his mouth.

He had threatened an attack. He had sworn no boots on the ground. He had said  it would be short and would accomplish the goal.

Which was?

Frighten Syria so it would never use poison gas again?

Destroy Syria’s chemical stockpile?

Enable the “rebels” to succeed in toppling Assad’s government?

Who knows?

We didn’t learn anything about goals from the speech, and we certainly didn’t  learn any more from hapless Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in so far over  his head that it would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

And it is serious, because, like it or not, the Middle East is a tinderbox  just waiting for the right spark to set it all off.

Iraq teeters on the edge of a breakdown of any semblance of order.

Egypt and Libya, all because of the masterful decisions of Barack Obama and  Hillary Clinton, are in their own form of chaos.

Iran is on the verge of its nuclear weapons, if it hasn’t already got them  stockpiled.

Syria is in the midst of a civil war, which would leave al-Qaida in charge if  Assad were toppled.

Through it all, the Muslim Brotherhood is cheering its victories at our  expense – think Benghazi and Egypt – and despite that, it appears the U.S.  president wants to assist the rebels in Syria to topple that government.

Does he really think that helping al-Qaida to victory will result is any  semblance of regional stability?

Does he really think?

Through it all, Israel, which would be the next target along with Jordan if  the rebels succeed, has remained relatively silent.

I have no doubt they’re ready with decent defense plans; I would expect no  less of them. Their very survival is on the line, and while Obama mouths words  of support, there aren’t many who would put money on it.

The most surreal aspect of all this is that after the immediate verbal  fall-out from the speech and Kerry’s verbal gaffes, we end up with Russia’s  Vladimir Putin being the ostensible hero.

He’s now running things – calling the shots and working with Syria to make  the U.S. follow their lead.

He even wrote a scathing op-ed criticism of the United States that was  published in the New York Times.

No reaction from our lap-dog administration, but Sen. John McCain says he’s  going to write his own version for Pravda!

You go, John. That’ll show them.

What’s the matter with the people running this country that something like  this can happen right under their noses and they allow it – and it doesn’t seem  to bother or embarrass them in the least?!

No wonder the world laughs at us – U.S. – all because of the man in the Oval  Office, a political incompetent surrounded by an administration filled with  similarly unskilled political hacks.

It remains to be seen how all this plays out but it’s still a volatile  situation that could, as many have projected, turn out to be a World War III of  unimaginable magnitude.

As for how history will describe Obama when it tells his story, I have a  summary, from Macbeth:

“… It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying  nothing.”

What a difference a week makes. In a scathing critique of the president’s handling of the crisis in Syria, Judge Jeanine Pirro scolded President Obama on the values of leadership.

“Leaders are not born, they evolve,” Pirro said on her FoxNews show Friday. “They earn respect because of their character, integrity and credibility. Leaders are direct, clear and concise.”

Pirro cited Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as examples of real leaders.

“Leaders don’t dither, vacillate, get boxed into corners or play games,” she said. “They make the hard decisions. They don’t pass them off on others. They understand the buck stops with them.”

Pirro said every time Obama opens his mouth he gets into trouble – even by contradicting Secretary of State John Kerry on the type and effects of a military strike on Syria.

“But enter big, bad Vlad doing the Putin pivot,” Pirro said referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The Russian president throws a lifeline to both Syria’s Assad and to the president of the United States.”

Pirro said that the United States should have been able to solve this crisis on its own, adding that she doubted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ever feared an attack orchestrated by Obama.

“Mr. President, admit it: You’ve been played, been caught flat-footed by a devil that doesn’t wear Prada,” she said.

Watch Pirro’s opening statement on Fox News:

Photo credit: Merrimack Police

A man wearing a President Barack Obama mask, a suit coat, tie and jeans, was recorded Wednesday morning on surveillance video robbing a Bank of America in Merrimack, N.H..

Officers responded after the man demanded money from a teller, then fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to the Merrimack Patch.

Witnesses helped determined the direction the man traveled and police arrested John Griffin, 52, of Newport, N.H., the Patch reported. While he never pulled a gun during the robbery, he was apprehended with a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition in his possession.

Griffin was charged with robbery and is being held on $75,000 bond pending a Sept. 20 court appearance.

No word yet on whether liberals will charge Griffin with racism for mocking the president.

Boehner just keeps repeating his goal – tying an increase in the debt limit  to cuts in spending.

In other words, he has announced plans to keep doing the same thing over  again expecting different results.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew held a press conference two weeks ago  in which he laid out the very specific and clear demands of the administration:  There will be no negotiations with Congress over the debt limit issue. Obama,  too, evidently plans to keep doing the same thing over again, understandably  expecting the same results he has achieved before – capitulations by Republicans  to hand over to Obama all the borrowed money he needs to implement Obamacare and  other wasteful, counterproductive and unconstitutional spending programs.

So what can Republicans who control the House do to get themselves engaged to  end Obamacare, as they claim to want, and radically reduce spending?

First, I  would refer you to my previous commentary on this issue titled “Not defunding is  defending.” It is an important premise to understand before moving  on to a Republican strategy and slogan for winning the debate.

Second, it’s clear that Obama thinks he has the upper hand because he is a  better poker player than Boehner. It makes sense to bluff when it has worked  over and over and over again. Now it’s time for House Republicans to offer up  their own non-negotiable demand.

Notice what Lew, speaking for the Obama administration said. The debt limit  must be unconditionally raised for the following reasons:

• to protect America from defaulting on its debt, a development that would  hurt the economy;
• to ensure Social Security benefits are uninterrupted;
• to ensure that veterans benefits and support for the U.S. military  continue;
• all negotiations about entitlement reform and taxes are to take place in  formulating a budget rather than in the context of a debate over the debt  limit.

There’s a simple way for Boehner to trump Obama on the debt limit that will  force him to negotiate – if that’s the speaker’s real goal.

All he needs to do is to approve a continuing resolution to fund all payments  on the debt, to pay Social Security benefits, to pay veterans benefits and to  fund the military. That would effectively kill Obama’s implicit threats to cut  spending on programs that have popular support.

Boehner needs to do this tomorrow – or Republicans will once again lose the  battle to cut spending in a meaningful way, including defunding Obamacare.

At that point, Obama would at least have to invent new rationalizations to  prevent a government shutdown. And Boehner would be in the driver’s seat knowing  that he has removed the political hammer from Obama’s hands.

Will House Republicans do it?

Not without pressure from you.

And there is an easy and inexpensive way for you to get through to Boehner,  who is facing a mutiny from his own caucus.

It’s called the “No More Red Ink”  campaign.

It allows you to utilize an effective, high-tech, grass-roots lobbying tool  to save your country from going off the fiscal cliff – which will happen only if  the borrowing-and-spending merry-go-round is finally stopped.

Going to war should not be a game of posturing and political charades, but  rather a quantified presidential decision based on our national and strategic  interests or to defend the nation.

Barack Obama’s ever-shifting policy on lobbing a few rockets or dropping a  few “little” bombs on Syria is a political debacle – an international  embarrassment engineered by a guy who knows as much about international  maneuvering as I do about quantum physics. Actually, less.

It is not the credibility of Congress, the international community or Mr.  Bush that is on the line, but Mr. Obama’s presidential integrity. He was the one  who mentioned a “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons by the Assad  punk, or maybe his Muslim Brotherhood buddies.

Recognizing that he jumped the red line Syrian shark, Obama is once again  looking for a way to slip out of his self-imposed political noose. This time,  however, the noose is much tighter, and Secretary of State Kerry is tightening  it each time he opens his pro-bombing mouth.

Experience more of  Ted Nugent’s no-holds-barred passion and patriotism in his books and WND’s “Ted  Nugent for President!” bumper sticker

The only people in America who want to bomb Syria are the traditionally  anti-war Democrats who now support an attack to protect their Democratic  president. There are also a couple of Fedzilla-genuflecting RINOs who support  bombing Syria.

If he bombs Syria, the president risks escalating military confrontation in  the Middle East, which would likely cause gas prices in the United States to  double and further cripple our increasingly artificial economy. If he doesn’t  bomb Syria, he looks like a tin-horn paper tiger, a community organizer so to  speak. The president has painted himself into a corner.

The nation watching this charade most closely has got to be Iran, which is  still building a nuclear weapon – which, by the way, was another “red line” of  our president.

Iran has to figure that if our president doesn’t bomb Syria, the United  States probably won’t bomb them, either. That job would be tossed over the fence  to Israel, which is just what Iran wants.

What the president is doing is hoping the Syrian bombing debacle fades into  the sunset so that he doesn’t have to make a decision. He’s hoping the whole  thing will fall off the front pages and that the next three years pass by as  quickly as possible so that he can hop on the $200,000-a-speech circuit.

Instead of bombing Syria, the president should be reminded that our dismal  economy is what matters most to Americans. Regretfully, our president knows even  less about how the engine of our economy operates than he does about maneuvering  in the Middle East.

Fasten your seat belts, America. The next three years are going to be a  mighty bumpy ride.

In a scathing “opening statement” Saturday night, Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro laid out the case against President Obama’s “dithering” on Syria – and it was <snip>ing.

“Really, Mr. President?” Pirro asked rhetorically, before launching into a description of the building of Russian and U.S forces in the eastern Mediterranean and Iranian “fast boat” action in the Persian Gulf that poses a danger of conflict far wider than the “quick military slap” Obama’s talking about.

“It’s teed up,” Pirro said.

She also noted brutality of the Syrian civil war over the past two years that has killed more than 100,000. The gas attack – widely ascribed to Syrian government forces – killed about 1,400, Pirro said.

“Why is killing one way more heinous and worthy of our response than another?” she asked.

Pirro also called out Obama’s ludicrous statement last week in Stockholm that he had not drawn a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian war, and showed a clip of the president doing exactly that during a news conference last year.

“A lie is a lie is a lie,” Pirro said, noting the whole world had heard the president say something he now denies. And that fecklessness can have tragic consequences.

“Your red lines are nothing more than green lights,” she said.

And more than once, she brought the conversation into the context of the shameful attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans – including Ambassador Chris Stephens – were killed in a terrorist attack that the administration refused to even acknowledge for weeks afterward.

“You lost credibility when you left American in Benghazi, then fired up Air Force One to go to your fundraiser in Las Vegas,” Pirro said, in a brutal, unsparing takedown of the series of lies, misstatements and obfuscations Obama and his minions have engaged in over the past year.

“It’s amateur hour in Washington,” Pirro said.

It might be amateur hour in Washington, but Pirro’s 10-minute indictment of the Obama administration is one that bears repeating, in Washington and throughout the country.

“Didn’t you win the Nobel Peace Prize?” Pirro concluded, in her rhetorical interrogation of the president.

“Yeah, you were the one …. Give it back!”

When it comes to President Obama’s prowess as commander in chief, “leading  from behind,” at this point, would be a step up.

Some believe that the United States should engage in military action in  foreign countries when America’s national interests or those of our allies are  at stake. Some believe we should rarely do so, perhaps only when we are under  attack. Some think we should actively export democracy to other nations, whether  or not our national security interests are currently on the line. And some, like  President Obama, are literally all over the map, a quagmire of incoherency.

In withdrawing their support for the war, wholly for political reasons,  Democrats made the preposterous claim that Bush, a man whose intellect they  accorded the respect of a medieval serf, had deceived them into supporting the  Iraq War resolution by false or hyped claims about weapons of mass  destruction.

It didn’t matter to them that investigations showed that Bush clearly hadn’t  manufactured, doctored or misrepresented the intelligence about WMD in Iraq or  that most of the world’s important intelligence agencies came to the same  conclusions as ours had. Nor did it matter that they had reviewed virtually the  same intelligence reports Bush had when they decided to support the war  resolution and that we mustered the support of much of the international  community.

When it was in their perceived political interests to support the war effort  and apparently too much time hadn’t passed since Sept. 11 to give them the  required cover, they supported it. But when they needed to undermine Bush’s  clout as a war president, they shamelessly changed their tune.

They started clamoring about the indispensability of an international  consensus before going to war. They were impervious to claims that Saddam  Hussein had brutalized his own people, including with the use of chemical  weapons. They went out of their way to deny any link between Saddam and the war  on terror and our enemies in that war. They were unmoved by Saddam’s violation  of countless United Nations resolutions.

Democrats trampled one another on the way to the podium to assert that  President Bush was a militaristic ogre who lied to get us into war. They  manufactured and broadcast wildly exaggerated and spuriously deceitful claims  about the deaths and damage America had inflicted in Iraq.

When he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama strongly emphasized  these same criticisms of Bush and the Republicans. Under their leadership, the  world had lost its respect for us. Obama promised to change all this and make  America beloved in the world.

Based on their statements, we must conclude that Obama and his Democrats  abhor doublespeak from America’s commanders in chief and military interventions  that are not supported by the international community and are based on dubious  intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

Yet after Obama’s disgraceful double talk concerning a “red line,” the  Democrats almost unanimously support Obama’s apparent decision to strike Syria  with or without congressional approval – despite there being a conspicuous  absence of any understandable foreign policy objective, no discernible national  interest at stake, unequivocal disapproval from the American people, little  support from the international community, questionable intelligence about the  chemical weapons and a substantial risk that the intervention could ignite major  disruption in the region, empower Islamic radicals hostile to the United States,  which seems to be the common denominator driving all his interventions, and  otherwise jeopardize America’s interests and those of our ally Israel.

The only reason anyone can figure for Obama’s deciding to bomb Syria is that  he believes he must do so to save face and credibility for having drawn a “red  line” against the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, a line he now says he  didn’t draw – as if he’ll enhance his credibility by denying he made a claim we  witnessed him making in no uncertain terms. He is now demeaning the very  international community he libelously accused Bush of alienating for not joining  us in this ill-considered action.

The left is all about opposing military interventions – when Republicans are  in power and our proposed intervention is truly in our national security  interests. Leftists are all about enlisting the support of the international  community when it suits their interests – and ignoring it when it doesn’t.  They’re adamant about the necessity of being 100 percent certain about our  intelligence data before acting militarily, except when they’re in charge. And  they’re all about plain-spoken words from the commander in chief, unless they  hold the presidency.

I could have sworn that President Obama and his party decried so-called  unilateralism when they falsely claimed Bush had engaged in it. But now they  enthusiastically embrace it when Obama is preparing to actually do it – acting  unilaterally with respect to both the legislative branch and the international  community.

Whether or not the entire international community loved President George W.  Bush, they respected him – to the extent that world leaders knew he meant what  he said. Obama has neither their love nor their respect.

It’s obvious he hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, but it’s just as obvious he’s  hellbent on doing it. What a pathetic mess.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Monday, according to Bloomberg  News, that “the U.S. must follow up with more assistance to Assad’s  opponents to shift the balance of power in the conflict … dismissing concerns  that some rebels have militant ties. ‘Those who say we don’t know who the  opposition are, they are either not telling the truth and they know the truth or  they are badly mistaken.’”

This is rich coming from a man who posed  with known jihad kidnappers in Syria. Back in May, McCain went to Syria to  meet with the opposition. While there, he posed for a now-notorious photo with  two Sunni jihadists who were involved in kidnapping 11 Shiite pilgrims in 2012.  This is what happens when clueless politicians inject themselves into situations  in which they clearly do not belong. What was McCain thinking, sneaking into  Syria to meet with jihadists?

McCain said Monday that blocking Obama’s Syria strike would be  “catastrophic.” No, Sen. McCain. Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood in  Egypt was “catastrophic,” and so is his backing of the Brotherhood and al-Qaida  in Syria.

McCain explained that to refuse to go along with Obama’s Syrian misadventure  would be “catastrophic” because “it would undermine the credibility of the  United States of America and of the president of the United States.” As if Obama  hasn’t undermined his own credibility beyond repair already.

Then on Tuesday, McCain dismissed the Syrian jihadis’ cries of “Allahu akbar”  by equating them with saying “Thank G-d.” We are witnessing an embarrassing  meltdown right before our very eyes. John McCain equating the cries of “Allahu  akbar” after a jihadi attack with “Thank G-d” requires a complete break with  reality.

I have never heard Christian or Jew (or any non-Muslim) scream “Thank G-d”  after beheading someone or blowing up a school, or slaughtering Muslims on their  way to mosque. “Allahu akbar” is a war cry, and John McCain is an idiot. The  bloodcurdling cry of “Allahu akbar” is meant to “strike terror in the hearts of  the unbelievers” (Quran 3:151).

Why isn’t McCain the poster boy for the Christians and religious minorities  being persecuted, oppressed and slaughtered under Muslim rule? He is a disgrace.  McCain and Graham should be backing the Christians and the Kurds, not jihadists  in Syria. The GOP coming to the rescue of the most seditious and dangerous  president in American history is inexcusable and unforgivable.

Pamela Geller’s  commitment to freedom from jihad and Shariah shines forth in her books —  featured at the WND Superstore

Even the New  York Times reported that “nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a  secular fighting force to speak of.” And that was on April 28. Nothing has  improved for secularists in Syria since then. But neither the Democrats nor the  RINOs have noticed, despite McCain’s protestations to the contrary. Secretary of  State John Kerry on Sunday compared Bashar al-Assad to “Adolf Hitler and Saddam  Hussein.”

It would be funny if it weren’t so scary. Just last week the Middle East  Media Research Institute (MEMRI) ran a  story featuring jihadists talking about fighting with the “rebels” and the  Free Syrian Army – the very groups Obama is supporting. There has to be a  complete disconnect to reality for Obama and McCain to support these savages.  Despite knowing that the opposition in Syria is driven by jihad and brutal  Islamic supremacism and that its players include the Taliban and al-Qaida, Congress caved to Obama’s demand to arm the jihadists. In July,  House and Senate Intelligence panel members voted  to block Obama from arming the Syrian jihadis, but Obama decided to arm them  anyway.

And no, I do not believe Assad used chemical weapons. I think that is an  elaborate ruse by the jihadists to get the U.S. and Europe to take up arms  against Assad. And it looks as if it is working.

Which Muslim Brotherhood operatives are advising McCain and Graham?  Seriously. CAIR, ISNA, ICNA? How otherwise could they possibly have come to the  conclusion that Obama’s catastrophic Syria plan is good for America?

Muslims from around the world – the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia – are joining  the jihad in Syria to fight for Islamic conquest and supremacism. Religious  minorities are being annihilated by the jihadists, and yet another nation could  well fall to this brutal and bloody ideology.

And it isn’t just McCain. John Boehner Tuesday announced  his support for Obama’s Syrian plan. And Jeb  Bush is going to present an award to Hillary Clinton. Why? Why would the GOP  and a potential 2016 candidate sanction this? Remember: Clinton’s  State Department was told that Benghazi was a “terrorist attack” minutes after  it began – and lied about it.

We don’t need a third party. We need a second party. Ted Cruz is not enough.  The GOP is all but disappearing before our very eyes. They are MIA on Obamacare,  Benghazi, the IRS and now Syria.

Obama is aiding the jihadists; McCain is sneaking into Syria to pose for pics  with them. The former is complicit, the latter is clueless. The outcome is the  same.

White House

President Barack Obama meets with his national security advisers in the White House Situation Room on Saturday to discuss strategy in Syria. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is fourth from right.

A stroll around the White House grounds with his top adviser on Friday evening changed President Barack Obama’s mind about getting Congress to sign off on a military strike in Syria, senior White House officials told NBC News.

Obama had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the past week, the officials said. Obama was convinced he had the evidence to back up a strike and as a result dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to make a passionate case for U.S. action. But only hours after Kerry called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "a thug and a murderer" and accused his regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the officials said.

The plan was immediately met with robust resistance from a whiplashed Obama team who had listened to Kerry lay out the administration's strongest case yet for action against Assad. "My friends, it matters here if nothing is done," Kerry had argued. "It matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens."

Obama's National Security Council had believed since last weekend that requiring a vote was not even on the table and that “consultation” in the form of congressional briefings and behind-the-scenes conversation was all that would be needed before a strike. One senior official noted that no key leaders in Congress had specifically requested a vote on military intervention.

Officials said that after the president met with national security advisers on Aug. 24, they determined the evidence showed Syria’s Assad regime had used chemical weapons in an attack earlier this month. At that time, the president indicated he was leaning toward a strike.

But a growing number of Congressional members were beginning to question the administration’s strategy by the end of the week.  And an NBC News poll released Friday morning showed that nearly 80 percent of Americans agreed that the president should seek approval in advance of taking military action.

Officials said Obama also was influenced by Thursday’s lively debate in the House of Commons, where Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote in Parliament to authorize participation in an allied strike against Syria. Cameron had been a staunch advocate of military action but was chastened in the wake of the vote.  “It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action,” Cameron said.  “I get that, and the government will act accordingly.”

While Obama's advisers argued Friday night in private that the humiliating defeat for Cameron starkly illustrated the risks of asking for congressional input, the president responded that the vote in Parliament demonstrated exactly why he should seek a vote on this side of the Atlantic, senior officials told NBC News.

And, the president insisted, seeking legislative backing was the approach most consistent with his philosophy.  While debate within the administration continued into late Friday, by Saturday morning the senior advisers acquiesced.

Speaking to the nation early Saturday afternoon, Obama said he was “mindful that I'm the president of the world's oldest constitutional democracy.  I've long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” 

Where did that come from? Since when has he cared of, by and for the people?  

The president also noted, “while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.”

White House aides said they are fairly confident that Congress will grant them the authority to launch a strike, although they maintain that Obama would be acting within his constitutional authority even if Congress rejects the authorization and Obama orders military intervention.

Congress is not scheduled to return to Washington for debate until Sept. 9. The administration decided not to call them back early due to the Jewish holidays this week, a delay that the Pentagon also signed off on, saying that the wait won’t diminish U.S. military capabilities in the region. There’s an upside to that cooling-off period too, aides said. The delay gives Obama time to make his case to Congress and to keep pushing for international support.

While the United States does not believe it needs military help in a strike, Obama will push allies for political backing when he attends the G20 summit in Russia next week.

Reaction from Congress was mostly positive in the hours after Obama detailed his position. A statement from House Speaker John Boehner other GOP leaders stated: “We are glad the president is seeking authorization for any military action in Syria in response to serious, substantive questions being raised” and noted Congress would begin debate when they return to Washington.  And House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, "President Obama is right that the debate and authorization by Congress for action will make our country and the response in Syria stronger.”

That's just the opposite of what she had sais last week, maybe it will be different next week.

But a key group of Syrian rebels who have been fighting the Assad regime reacted in surprise and anger to the decision.

"The death will continue in Syria because of the (failure of the) leadership of the United States to act decisively at this point," said Louay Safi, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council. "Obama had the moral responsibility (to) act and not waiver."