Obama, a Muslim Hater of America?

As observers of the MSM herd know, the "elite" media have swooned over "scandalous" allegations that Obama is unpatriotic and that he might be a closet Muslim. Instead, however and of course, of investigating whether these things are true, the media commissars have focussed on the "crazy" right-wingers who have dared to broach these taboo subjects.

Well, broach them we must; broach them we will.

To the first issue: Does Obama not love America and, in fact, does he side with our enemies? While this humble blog has dealt with this issue many times in the past, the best reply to that, as usual, comes from the great Canadian observer of the world and truth teller, Mark Steyn,

One way to look at the current "leader of the free world" is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently? 

For example, he has spent most of this week hosting an international conference on something called "violent extremism". Whatever may be said of Munich, Chamberlain never hosted a three-day summit on "rearmament" in general whose entire purpose was to deny that "rearmament" and "Germany" were in any way connected. Yet that is exactly the message the United States government has just offered to the world - in between such eccentric side spectacles as Marie Harf, star of the hilarious new comedy Geopolitically Blonde, explaining her jobs-for-jihadis program, and the new hombre in charge of the planet's mightiest military machine having his woman felt up on camera by Joe Biden. Now there's a message to send to the misogynists of Burqastan about what happens when you let the missuses out of their body bags.

Steyn nailed it: If Obama hates America, what would he do differently than what he's already done? In short, is Obama guilty of hate crime? We will get back to that in a few minutes but first let's deal with the Muslim issue. I have to admit that I initially didn't pay attention to allegations that he was a Muslim. My thinking on that, however, has "evolved." It has thanks in large part to the Diplowife, who one day said, "I don't know why people deny he's a Muslim. Look at how he was raised. Some of that had to stick." Agree, and that means the answer is a bit more complicated than a straight up "yes" or "no." Let me expound.

His father was an anti-British, Muslim/Communist (a popular Third World ideological mix in the 1950s and 1960s). After his Kenyan father abandoned the family, his mother (apparently, a rather strange drifter and a leftist) remarried to another Muslim--I don't know if she did, but she probably had to convert to Islam or at least pretend to do so. The new family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. There Barrack Hussein Obama spent his formative years in a Muslim school, engaging in Muslim prayer rituals and learning about the religion, before returning to a highly dysfunctional leftist-tinged family situation that awaited him in Hawaii. Then it is all mystery surrounded by yet more mystery. As I noted over two years ago,

We are not allowed to ask how this self-admittedly mediocre, drug-using student from a highly dysfunctional family, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, managed to attend exclusive and expensive schools.

Who were the young lad's benefactors? How did he go to expensive private school in Hawaii and later on to a series of very expensive elite colleges on the mainland? Why did his odd-ball leftist grandfather entrust his mentoring to an old line Communist like Frank Marshall Davis? All very weird; all very unexplained. As the Diplowife would say, some of that had to stick.

After attending several "elite" universities, Obama moved to Chicago and became a "community organizer." He joined a phony "Christian" church headed by Jeremiah Wright. This "church," of course, was just a political front and an activist center for the promotion of grievance and hatred for America. Obama made a smart and calculated political move in linking up with Wright. He fit right in.

What we have in Obama is not a full-blown Muslim or a full-blown Communist. He quite simply does not have the intellectual sophistication to hold a fully developed ideology. He is a product of years of learning hate, resentment, and entitlement. He is a product of the grievance culture which dominates our "elite liberal" universities, "elite liberal" media, and, of course, "elite liberal" culture--listen to the speeches at this year's Oscars if you have doubts on that score. (See a piece I wrote several years ago, Marxism Mutates, which discusses the "new" Marxism.)

Islam feeds right into that culture. Radical Islam is an ideology for the aggrieved, better said, for the losers of the world. It is no coincidence that it is the fastest growing cult among prisoners in the West. Islam is about mindless grievance and revenge for slights real and imagined, regardless of when and where they might have occurred. This is why progressives have such difficulty criticizing Islam and taking a tough stance against its barbarities. Islam is seen as part of the "Third World" reaction to the "offenses" of the "white" West, be those the Crusades, the great European empires, or the West's technological and economic dominance. Islam is the friend of progressivism in its hatred for Western culture.

There is a Molotov-Ribbentrop type understanding between progressives and radical Islam.

Obama has incorporated into his thinking and acting the Muslim and the progressive strands of grievance culture and their joint hatred for the West. He leads the movement to destroy America. I touched on Obama's leadership of the hate America "folks" a couple of years ago,

Obama has captured this movement and its view, and represents and promotes it better than anybody else in living memory. Unlike Carter, Obama is not incompetent in promoting his hatred for America's traditional values and in embedding it into our institutions, e.g., the ruinous Obamacare, the rapid expansion of the federal dole, the insistence on apologizing for our successes, the disastrous "stimulus" spending, the glorification of the "victim" culture, promotion of envy and cynicism, and denigration of individual effort and success ("You didn't build that!") That is the real threat posed by what Obama represents. Overcoming that threat will take years of sustained effort.

Obama hates America and Western civilization. He wants to replace them with some sort of horrid Third World culture in which the progressive elite will be in charge.

He shares his father's dream. 

Is it All About the Profit, Muhammed? The State Department Wants to Know . . .

Where to begin.

We have a White House and a State Department almost immune to ridicule. How, after all, can you make fun of the Three Stooges? Can you really heap ridicule on Benny Hill or the Marx Brothers? This Misadministration is just about beyond parody.

One of the latest Stoogismos--of so many--comes from the apparently 18-year-old college freshman whom Obama has as his State Department Deputy Spokesmanpersonhumanbeing. Mari Harf said in an interview on MSNBC (where else?) that when it comes to ISIS (my emphasis added),

"We're killing a lot of them, and we're going to keep killing more of them. < . . . > But we cannot win this war by killing them <. . .> We need . . . to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs, . . . If we can help countries work at the root causes of this -- what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?"

I know I promised--sort of--not to make fun of these folks, but please: Mari Harf, World Renowned Military Strategist? Not even Brian Williams claimed such lofty creds . . .  Yes, apparently, she knows how to run a war, or whatever it is we're in with ISIS. I hope the Marine Corps leadership is listening to Fieldmarshal Harf. World War I's greatest general, Sir John Monash, could have learned so much from our very own Mari . . .

Just as we can't drill our way to lower energy prices and energy independence, we can't kill our way to victory. Next, it will be, we cannot eat our way to obesity.

I tire of the stupidity . . .

We might do a face palm and utter, as did TV's Batman, "Poor, deluded child," but, in fact, this Spokesperhubeing has captured the essence of the Obama Misadministration, to wit, a total, ultimately disastrous disconnect from the real world. For them, people are just sad little brainless marionettes who can be pleased with a few shiny bobbles, you know, like, a job or, uh, hey, start a business . . . maybe a green business recycling adult diapers at a senior center, you know, do something for Gaia . . . that's the ticket, Muhammed. Get the little people little jobs and businesses and we can be free to run the world as we see fit . . .

My Dear Mari, and with whatever respect is due, My Dear Mr. President, ISIS already offers a job to its members. The job? Killing Christians and Jews--and any "random" not sufficiently Islamic Muslims--on its path to the apocalypse or global domination, whichever comes first. ISIS wants a final battle with the forces of Rome. Islam, you see, is the root cause for "folks" joining ISIS, not the lack of burger-flipping jobs, bad health care, or depressed minimum wages. The 9/11 hijackers, let's remember, came from wealthy families as did Osama bin Ladin. You see, Deputy Spokesperhubeing, these ISIS "folks," to use President Obama's endearing term, believe in something for which they willingly kill and die. It is a twisted retrograde ideology called, I repeat, Islam--yes, I said it, again, the forbidden word. A repellent creed, but one in which they believe, and motivates them to commit horrors. Give them at least credit for that.

Would fanatical Nazis have been dissuaded from conducting the Holocaust had they been offered jobs at McDonald's? Would fanatical Shintoists have given up massacring Chinese, Malays, and Filipinos in exchange for work at Barnes & Noble or TESCO?  I think not. In addition, of course, there are poor people all over the world who do not go around cutting off heads, burning prisoners to death, kidnapping and raping hundreds of schoolgirls, and vowing global conquest. I have lived in and visited lots of poor countries, e.g., Haiti, Bolivia, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, and those folks do not march people down to the beach and have televised beheadings, pour acid on their wives and daughters, throw gay men off tall buildings, set prisoners on fire, or vow to conquer the world in the name of religion. Something else than just poverty needs adding to the mix. Shall we call that active ingredient Islam? It is not just a matter, to paraphrase Andy Hardy, of, "Hey guys! Let's rent a barn and put on a show to raise money for jobs for the ISIS folks!"

Is this all too nuanced for you, Ms. Harf?

Dear Mari, it's not a profit that drives the ISIS thugs, it's the "Prophet."   

Too hard on the Deputy Spokesperhubeing? Probably. She, of course, is crippled by an elite education; we must take that into account. Worse, however, the inane insanity she spouts is THE OFFICIAL LINE. Yes, Dear Mari had not strayed off her talking points. At his pathetic little Extremism Summit, the President once again took to the podium to remind us that his teleprompter tells him that we are not war with Islam. Even he, however, has a problem coming up with non-Muslim terror in his pathetic little speech. Once he starts dealing with specific examples, guess what happens? They're all examples of Muslims killing people in the name of Islam. He admonishes the Great Unwashed that despite that, we should ignore the news cycle's portrayal of Muslims and that we should stress our success at diversity. In the midst of his speech, the "Leader" of the Free World, spends a lot of time berating Europeans for not "embracing" their Muslims.

The echo chamber media now reverberates with "embrace" Muslim headlines (Google the words, "Obama," "Embrace," and "Muslims"). What exactly have Muslims done that requires us to "embrace" them? Did people go about "embracing" Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, or Japanese immigrants to the USA? Not to my knowledge. They came to America, became Americans, and then many became successful Americans. No "embracing" requested, required, or given.

No sense going on. You get the drift.

We placed in power people who refuse to acknowledge that Western civilization is under sustained attack from Islam. This President has presided over and encouraged the greatest retreat of Western influence in decades, perhaps centuries. His foreign policy is beyond disastrous. There is not one success to which he can point. Libya is a bloody chaotic mess; in Syria, we now fight on the same side as the pencil-necked dictator we once vowed to remove; in Iraq, we depend on soon-to-be nuclear Iran and poorly armed bands of brave Kurds to "degrade" our ISIS enemy; in Latin America, we beg Cuba to normalize relations with us; in Asia, we watch passively as China tries to bully its way to predominance--and let's not even talk about the domestic side of the equation where our borders have vanished; our laws put into the freezer; millions of our jobs wiped out; and our economy nearly devastated.

We have a Misadministration that rather talk about "social justice," school lunches, having the military open to transgender recruits, and, of course, the "threat" posed by climate change.

On top of it all, we now must worry about jobs for ISIS and whether they can start a business.

Copenhagen Gets Added to the List

The practitioners of the Religion of Peace have been having a busy time.  They have struck in yet another center of Western progressive thought and politics, in another place that welcomed Muslims, gave them shelter and sustenance, and treated them with the sort of kindness and toleration that they could not get in their home countries from fellow practitioners of the Religion of Peace (ROP). They have repaid the Danes' hospitality in the same way that they repaid that of the people of Sydney, Boston, Ottawa, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris, and, of course, New York. Yes, murder is their coin of preference; that's how they show gratitude; that's how they pay their debts.

While our sad little President chokes on labeling these acts as terrorism, or even identifying the "bankrupt" ideology of the perpetrators, the practitioners of the unnamed ROP have no problem, whatsoever, openly and proudly engaging in "random acts" of violence against Christians and Jews. Our tiny "Commander in Chief" has no issue with getting on his "high horse" to denounce some MSNBC-watching atheist progressive nutcase who killed three Muslim students in North Carolina over a long-running parking dispute, and labeling his act, in effect, terrorism or a "hate" crime, but he just can't bring himself to get too, too worked up over the daily and mass killings by the followers of the ROP all over the world.

As I have stressed when dealing with ROP acts in other countries, it is time for the Danes to take a serious look at what is happening in and to their country and decide whether allowing the ROP into their country is a good move.

Denmark is a marvelous country with a terrific history.

One of the most fascinating accounts you can read is about the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. This tiny country handled it brilliantly and drove the Nazis mad with a mix of targeted killings of Danish collaborators, passive resistance, and endless bureaucratic hassles and negotiations. The Danes, ordinary CHRISTIAN Danes, made sure that almost every Danish Jew got smuggled out of the country and away from the Nazis.

I hope that Denmark can rediscover the sort of courage for which the Vikings and the aforementioned resistance were known, and not let the grim example of what has happened in Paris and elsewhere in Europe become the model for their quite extraordinary society.

Are They Really Journalists? No, They are Progressives and Must Lie

I have followed with moderate interest the tempest over NBC news "anchor" (weird word, that) Brian Williams, and his habitual "misremembering" of apparently dramatic events in his life. Perhaps foreign readers have not paid much attention to this sordid story, but American ones know that Williams, a fabulously well-paid "newsman" and "anchor" of the "prestigious" (cough!) NBC nightly news, got caught as a serial fabulist.

He told one whopper of a tale after another for years to pump up his personal resume and give himself some "street creds" among progressives who think that Williams and his ilk are intelligent, savvy, and bearers of the TRUE WORD.

As it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, he lied about saving puppies from a fire; about getting robbed by a gun-wielding mugger when Williams was a teen supposedly working for a charity on the "mean streets" of 1970s small-town New Jersey; about braving Hezbollah rockets in Israel; about watching bodies float down the Mississippi River during Katrina; about seeing a man jump to his death in a football stadium; and, of course, most famously, about flying on a chopper that got shot down in Iraq in 2003. Aside from proving a serial liar, he has become one of the most fawning, outright boot-licking fans and promoters of the disaster known as President Obama. He also has served as a regular on progressive TV shows, where he plays the part of the wise, humorous, Hemmingway-esque man of the world. He is the man who has seen it all, and who can with a knowing smirk or wink put down and dismiss all the deluded right-wing nuts out there. In other words, he is a hero and a product of the Hollywood-University-Media complex which has done so much irreparable damage to our nation and Western civilization.

Williams joins the ranks of other progressive "journalists" such as,

Dan Rather, who tried to throw an American election by pushing a patently false story about George W. Bush;

Janet Cook, who concocted a much awarded narrative of an eight-year-old heroin addict;

Jayson Blair, who fabricated a number of much-commented on stories for the New York Times;

Sabrina Erdely of Rolling Stone who spread the UVA fake rape story;

and, of course, who could forget, The Lord of Them All, Commissar in Chief Walter Duranty, New York Times apologist extraordinaire for Joseph Stalin and his mass murders in Ukraine.

You certainly can name many others.

I never met Williams, but during my long career did have dealings with other prominent "anchors"--one of whom nearly ended my career--and found them boring and idiotic. They were just actors: make-up, lights, dramatic pose, and read lines written by young staffers from the "best" schools. There was no journalism as most of us would think of journalism. The British have it mostly right. They call persons such as Williams, "readers," because they read the news to you. In one way, however, American "anchors" are not like British "readers." In our benighted Republic, "anchors" are vastly better paid, revered, and allowed a great deal of say over what and how they will report. In the recent past, if Williams, Rather, or Jennings did not want to report on something, then it simply must not have happened.

That little world of the "anchor," however, took a major hit with the invention of the internet by Al "Is it Getting Warm?" Gore--another fabulist of distinction. We now have millions of little "anchors" who can fact-check, provide alternative explanations for events, and bring sunlight to otherwise forgotten happenings and issues. Dan Rather, let us not forget, got brought down by bloggers. The internet also has debunked Williams. Imagine, just imagine, if we had had the internet in the time of Duranty, or even when the Saintly Walter Cronkite declared that we were losing in Vietnam when, in fact, we were winning . . .

There is something in the progressive mind-set that promotes, nay, requires compulsive lying. We see it in John Kerry and his fake stories of secret missions in Cambodia and his flying dog; Hillary Clinton and her Bosnian snipers; Susan Rice and her video explanation for Benghazi; Eric Holder with Fast and Furious; and even FDR who famously said these words now engraved on his DC monument,

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

In fact, of course, he saw none of these horrors. Those things tend not to happen in Hyde Park, New York.

The fundamental problem progressives such as Williams face is that the world is not as they would have it. Not at all. Many if not most of them have limited experience in the real world, having spent lives of wealth and privilege, sheltered in progressive educational institutions. They have very superficial knowledge of the world outside these bubbles, and rely, therefore, to a great deal on Hollywood. They incorporate into their personae the largely leftist rubbish pumped out by Hollywood.

In their world, the United States is still 1930's Alabama--or, better said, the Alabama of Hollywood. They want to unleash their inner Atticus Finch. In their world, murderers in the United States are middle aged white male business executives who kill black people instead of what happens in the real world where murderers are overwhelmingly young black men who generally kill black people. In their world, women can kung fu better and be bigger badasses than big burly guys, when, in fact, the opposite is true as shown by the progressives' contradictory and ceaseless calls for government to "protect" women from men. "I am woman! I am strong! Call the cops! Men are looking at me!" In progressive world, the KKK equals the Tea Party, when in the real world, the KKK served as the armed wing of the Democratic Party. In progressive world, Western civilization is the source for all the poverty and evil in the world, when, in fact, the concepts of liberty, justice, and human rights are Western constructs.

Your standard progressive activist has really done nothing very interesting, so he or she needs to get proper credentials, to show that he or she knows what's what, and that progressivism is what the world needs to deal with "problems"--after all, isn't life just a series of problems calling for progressive intervention? They want to see what they believe.

We, hence, have progressives making up the sort of stuff that puts them, the elite, in the center of the battle, on the ramparts, in the muddy trenches and downed helicopters with the common schlubs--the sort of worldly experience that allows progressives to tell us how to live our lives.

Telling lies is essential to progressivism.

"Terrible Deeds in the Name of Christ"

He's done it again.

The One has shown, one more time, that he is not fit to be Commander in Chief.

At this week's prayer breakfast he took it upon himself to remind the audience that people have done "terrible deeds in the name of Christ."

When I first saw the headline, for one very brief moment, a fraction of a second, I  thought he might be referring to his friends "Reverend" Al "I Don't Pay Taxes" Sharpton and "Reverend" Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright.

This was not the case.

No, my friends, the "most important man in the world," the "leader" of the Free World, the man who would make us " safe," was talking about the Crusades. Yes, the Crusades; you know the ones from some eight centuries ago. Now, of course, this is the sort of silly moral equivalence that one would expect from an Assistant Professor trying to impress gullible 19-year-olds on some Ivy League campus with his erudition and ability to "see the big picture" full, as it is, of shades of grey, not blacks and whites as "Fox news would have you believe."  The appropriate knowing snickers and snorts would follow, showing that the "highly educated" audience is with their Prof in rejecting the simplicities of the great unwashed and tax-paying masses.

OK, that is the behavior we expect from the empty heads dominating our universities and media. Is that what we would expect from a man who has command over troops in harm's way?

We have here an alleged Commander in Chief (CIC) who has the task--one would have thought--of protecting our nation and our very civilization from barbarians who, among other acts, burn prisoners to death; behead aid workers; throw gay men from tall buildings; crash airliners into skyscrapers killing thousands; kidnap and rape hundreds of school girls, and sell them into slavery; murder whole African villages; and, oh yes, vow global conquest. Our CIC, instead, repeats, and, thereby, gives credence to the jihadis, whom he won't name, and their tiresome "Crusaders!" meme. He does this, furthermore, at a time when Christians are being persecuted and murdered all over the Muslim world.

He is willing, furthermore, to name and besmirch the founder of Christianity but not--Allah forbid!--Muhammed, the founder of Islam, a cult of death with which the West has been at war for some fourteen centuries. Islam is a totalitarian cult that seeks our submission and destruction. That seems to escape The One's notice.

Imagine, if you will, Churchill or FDR in the midst of WWII justifying Nazi aggression or the death camps with some infantile nonsense about the Versailles Treaty, or reminding us of our own shoddy treatment of Irish immigrants, or responding to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the Phillippines with some discourse on past Western transgressions against Japan, "Commodore Mathew Perry, after all, was not invited by the Japanese people and was very aggressive with his Black Ships." Imagine what that would have done to the morale of our troops and our allies.

We have in the White House, at best, a man who is a complete and utter dolt, or, my fear, a man who actually sees the West as the source of all evil in the world and in need of a good defeat at the hands of the "Third World."

"Whatever Ideology They're Operating off of, it's Bankrupt"

I know I should not be shocked by President Obama's sheer stupidity and vapidness when it comes to major foreign policy events, but he manages to shock me again and again. This President is a nightmare.

You can go here and see his "off the cuff" comments on the brutal burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot by ISIS.

Obama conveys zero empathy or concern for the victim or family, just a bored and bloodless recitation of a string of words, and the kicker, wherein he says that this act shows that "whatever ideology they're operating off of, it's bankrupt."

That's it? That's the most he can muster when referring to the pilot of a friendly nation who was captured carrying out a US-led operation? He can't even utter the words "radical Islam."

He rushed through his impromptu statement so that he could get back to promoting his insane Obamacare folly.

This is a Commander-in-Chief? This?

All I can say is that when it comes to Obama and his followers "whatever ideology they're operating off of, it's bankrupt."

I miss Jimmy Carter.

Cuba Relations: Another Obama Fiasco in the Making?

The question mark in the title of this post is probably unnecessary.

I have written before about Obama's Cuba gambit. My argument then was regardless of how you feel about the "embargo" (more on that later) and the current state of USA-Cuba relations, the real question is, "Do you trust Obama to negotiate something in the US interest?"

Sending Team Obama to Cuba is not anything like Kissinger and Nixon to China. You might not have liked Dr. K and "Tricky Dick," but you knew they were tough SOBs, and that when it came to foreign relations they knew what they were doing. Nixon's China move, of course, was a major blow against the Soviet Empire and, as we see in retrospect, the beginning of the end for the USSR and its grand global ambitions. As brilliant on the international scene as he was clumsy on the domestic scene, Nixon drove home the growing schism in and fundamental weakness of the Communist bloc by visiting Beijing and Moscow in February and May, 1972, respectively, and then launching the massive Christmas bombing of North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese got the message: their Russian and Chinese "friends" were eager to cut deals with the US, and the Hanoi regime essentially was on its own. The North Vietnamese sued for peace: yes, my low info lefty friends, the US beat the North Vietnamese contrary to what you hear from universities, the BBC, the hideous MSNBC, or the Hollyweirdos. The Democrats, of course, unable to stand the thought of an American victory, subsequently threw it away some three years later--not unlike what Obama has done in Iraq and is doing in Afghanistan.

So, again, is Obama's Cuba "gambit" anything akin to the Nixon-Kissinger brilliant chess game? Uh, no, no it is not. A little further on we will look at what US "interests" are served by "normalized" relations with Cuba, but before we do that, we ask an even more basic question: can we trust Obama to do the right thing for the United States? While, as stock brokers will tell you, "past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results," it does provide a clue, a hint to what will come, and forms the basis for planning. Would you hire a roofing contractor, for example, who had devastated your neighbors' roofs and left them leaking messes? Despite the contractor's promises to do a good job this time, you most likely would find yourself inclined to look elsewhere.

As we look around the world at the shambles that is today's American foreign policy we have a pretty good indication of what we can expect from Team Obama on Cuba. Team O is The One, after all, that has brought us the current fiasco in North Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East: Remember Libya? Benghazi? Syrian "red lines"? Swapping five terrorists for one Army deserter? Support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? ISIS as the JV? Who can forget Team O's "accomplishments" in Iraq where we now see the jihadis increasingly victorious and the only hope we have to prevent their final triumph is Iran? Yes, Iran: You know, the country that is busily building a nuclear weapon while John Kerry beats up on Israel?

Team O has made a mess of relations with Russia, telegraphing weakness and indecision as Russia pulls an Anschluss on Crimea. Putin has been slowed down not by Obama and his absurd "sanctions," but by rough and tough redneck frackers who have made the USA the world's number one oil producer despite the opposition of Team O--remember, "We can't drill our way to energy independence!" Russia's oil-based economy and government budget have gone into a death spiral because of Texas and North Dakota.

The demented regime in North Korea continues to threaten hellfire and damnation and eagerly awaits Team O's concessions. China is busy bullying its neighbors and building its military power, much of it with technology stolen from or bought in the US and Europe. Team O refuses to approve the easy import of oil from Canada, fighting the Keystone pipeline for years, and souring relations with our neighbor. Australia, probably our number one ally in the world, increasingly feels alone, and wondering whatever happened to its old friend the USA. Instead of serious engagement on dealing with China and jihadis, PM Abbott gets lectures on global warming as the biggest threat facing mankind. It seems, fortunately, that the Aussies are not listening.

Europe, the continent of "has-beens, never-weres, and never-will-bes," is adrift, amok, and amuck in a growing socio-political-economic crisis, with no adult leadership able to restore sanity. Instead of providing leadership in confronting the Islamic terror threatening Western Civilization, Kerry brings a "big hug" and a washed up folk singer to croon to the terrified Europeans, "You've got a friend."

In Latin America, we see similar disaster. Mexico and Central America are awash in drug-fueled violence. South America is circling the drain economically and increasing falling prey to authoritarian leftist "solutions," as we see in Argentina and Uruguay. Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador kick out our Ambassadors and openly support drug trafficking. Former allies such as Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Chile are trying to put distance between themselves and Team O as quickly as possible.

The most "successful" Team O policy in Latin America? Operation Fast and Furious: Team O "successfully" managed to fuel the false story about violence in Mexico being caused by US gun sales, "successfully" managed to "prove" it by declaring a covert war on the people of Mexico by secretly selling thousands of guns to some of the most vicious cartels on earth, getting hundreds of innocent Mexicans and at least two US federal agents murdered, and blaming it on law-abiding gun stores in the US--oh, yes, and "successfully" stonewalling Congressional investigators and getting the echo-chamber media to ignore the whole thing.

That, my friends, is The Team now dealing with the Castro brothers--and I haven't even gotten into the domestic side of things where Team O has a record of "successes" to rival its foreign "successes."

Now we return to Cuba. From a US national interest perspective (Horrors!) whether we have good or bad relations with the decrepit Castro regime is irrelevant. It means nothing today. The Soviet Empire that the Castros so assiduously served is gone. For all its bluff and bluster, Putin's Russia is no substitute for the USSR. In the years since the death of the Soviet bloc, the Castro regime has managed to keep power by brutal repression and the largesse of Hugo Chavez's corrupt regime in Caracas. Now even Dear Friend Chavez is gone, and Venezuela, under the one-time bus driver and street thug Maduro, has reached a state of near economic collapse--thanks, again, to US fracking and the inevitable consequences of socialist governance.

We see, therefore, that Castroite Cuba needs good relations with the United States. That bears repeating: Castroite Cuba needs good relations with the United States. The United States, however, does not need good relations with Castroite Cuba. It does not matter at all to our core national interests. Not one bit.

It is Castro's Cuba that should be begging for "normalization" of relations. In Team Obama's world, however, that is not the case: the USA chases after the sibling dictators. Cubans are some of the smartest and most talented people on earth. There is something--don't know what it is, but wish I could get a can or two of it--about Cuban culture, even under Communists, that produces people with brilliant strategic minds. In all my dealings with Cubans, both friendlies and hostiles, I have never ceased to be amazed at how they see several moves ahead; keeping up is no mean feat. These are very smart and talented people. The Castros,furthermore, have had decades of watching American politics and seeing American presidents come and go. Fidel took power, let us remember, when Eisenhower was still our President. The brothers have an excellent intelligence service and other sources to keep them fully apprised of doings in the North. They know us much better than we know them.

It makes no sense from the US perspective to get into protracted negotiations with the Castros on "normalizing" relations. At most, we should lay down our two or three requirements that the Castros must do, leave our phone number, and walk away. But, no. Team O is allowing the United States to get sucked into the Castro world of endless talks, demands, posturing, and browbeating. It is the Castro regime making demands on the USA, and the USA making concessions, e.g., freeing up dollars for Cuba. The Castros are masters at negotiations and have learned to drive wedges into opponents. We see Senators going to Cuba trying to strike trade deals, for example, and to eliminate travel restrictions without getting anything in return.

The Castros "demand" an end to all trade restrictions--which in Castro talk means to get goods on credit. Despite the so-called embargo, the US is Cuba's third or fourth largest trading partner (depends on the year examined.) We sell a considerable amount of food, medicine, vitamins, and medical equipment to Cuba. The Castro regime, however, has to pay up-front for the goods. No credit. The US is Cuba's only trading partner with which Cuba has no running tab. In other words, they want us now to provide stuff in exchange for a promise to pay . . . and they do not have a good track record of paying. As do all lefties, they want "free stuff." The Castroites are now also demanding the closing of Guantanamo Naval base and its return as a condition for "normalizing" relations. For now, the US has rejected the Guantanamo demand, but wait, I tell you, wait.

The brothers Castro understand something very important about our negotiators. One, the State Department is obsessed with reaching "successful" deals. People get promoted and get juicy assignments for bringing home a deal. Doesn't have to be a good one. Two, the rush by the US to "normalize" relations is an attempt by Obama to leave a legacy to his leftist fan base. This is something Obama wants, regardless of whether the USA needs it. The timeline is working against the US. Obama wants a deal before he leaves office. The Castros will squeeze him for all he can give before they agree to "normalize."

I was wrong: the question mark in the title of this post is definitely unnecessary.