Left Turns... this thread will document the left turning on its own

The Insiders: Voters have turned decidedly against President Obama

By Ed Rogers October 6 at 3:48 PM
Voters have turned decidedly hostile toward President Obama and his policies. That’s not just my partisan view; it is empirical data. A poll released over the weekend shows that 32 percent of voters are using their midterm election votes to send a message of opposition to the president. That is “the highest ‘no vote’ percentage in the last 16 years” as measured by Gallup. I have never seen a White House or a political party as hollowed out as the Democrats appear to be now. The Obama presidency isn’t officially over yet, but it is receding further into our rearview mirror. And it is becoming clear that many in the Democratic Party think the Obama presidency is effectively over, and they are acting accordingly.

recent scathing criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy(or lack thereof) to the myriad of Democratic campaign ads aimed atdistancing candidates from the president, all signs point to Democrats’ disillusionment with the president. Their disengagement from President Obama is remarkable, given how financially dependent many Democrats are on the president’s fundraising abilities.

A piece written by David Graham in The Atlantic argues that President Obama is facing a “friendly-fire problem,” but his problems obviously run deeper than criticisms from ex-Administration officials. The Democrats are already pointing fingers and assigning blame — even though it is too early to do an election 2014 post-mortem — and nothing the president is doing is helping. David Axelrod even called President Obama’s assertion that his “policies are on the ballot” “a mistake” on “Meet the Press” this weekend.

I wrote back in July that President Obama was already acting like a former president, which prompted some others to claim that President Obama’s last two years might actually be the most important two years of his presidency. Obviously, he isn’t literally a former president, but I still think the famously bored Barack Obama has settled into a caretaker role, without an affirmative agenda or fresh energy to drive new plans. After November, I think we can expect the occasional staff-written executive order and that the president will remain on call for decisions that have to be made. Everyone in the administration will continue to enjoy their perks of office, hoping nothing really bad happens. The same is true for the Democratic leadership if they maintain control of the Senate. They are all about the privileges of the majority. It doesn’t appear that anyone in the Democratic leadership thinks there is any urgency to get anything done during the next two years. And that is really too bad, given all the problems we have and the threats we face.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ave-turned-decidedly-against-president-obama/
 
In Book, Panetta Recounts Frustration With Obama

WASHINGTON — After resigning as secretary of defense last year, Leon E. Panetta watched with growing dismay at what he perceived as a president losing his way. Instead of asserting American leadership on the world stage, Mr. Panetta concluded, President Obama was vacillating and overly cautious.

“He was concerned about the frustration and exhaustion of the country having fought two wars,” Mr. Panetta observed in an interview on Monday. The president, he said, nursed “the hope that perhaps others in the world could step up to the plate and take on these issues.” As a result, he added, “there was a kind of a mixed message that went out with regard to the role of the United States.”

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Typically frank, occasionally feisty and finally free of the constraints of clearing opinions with the White House, Mr. Panetta is re-emerging with a blunt account of his time in the Obama administration. In a new memoir to be published on Tuesday, Mr. Panetta draws a largely respectful portrait of a president who made important progress and follows a “well-reasoned vision for the country” but too often “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

The latest in a series of insider accounts of the Obama administration,“Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” issued by Penguin Press, is not as scathing as the one by Mr. Panetta’s predecessor,Robert M. Gates, but more openly critical than those of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Mr. Panetta, who was C.I.A. director before taking over the Pentagon, recounted decisions that he disagreed with, including the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq in 2011, the failure to intervene in Syria’s civil war by arming rebels and the abrupt reversal of Mr. Obama’s decision to strike Syria in retaliation for using chemical weapons on civilians. Mr. Obama “vacillated” over the Syria strike and “by failing to respond, it sent the wrong message to the world,” he wrote.

Had the president followed different courses, Mr. Panetta said in the interview, the United States would be in a stronger position as it now tries to counter the rise of the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He added that he believed the president has turned a corner and “is going a long way in terms of repairing some of the damage I think took place as a result of the credibility issue that was raised on Syria.”

But he criticized the president for not going to Congress to seek approval for attacks on the Islamic State and for ruling out in advance the deployment of American ground troops. “I don’t think it’s good enough now to fall back on what was provided soon after 9/11,” Mr. Panetta said, referring to the 2001 congressional vote authorizing force against Al Qaeda and affiliates.

For Mr. Panetta, the moment that crystallized his frustration with Mr. Obama came when the president made little effort to stop deep automatic budget cuts mandated by the sequester.

“Indeed, that episode highlighted what I regard as his most conspicuous weakness, a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause,” Mr. Panetta wrote. “That is not a failing of ideas or of intellect,” he added. “He does, however, sometimes lack fire. Too often, in my view, the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”

Mr. Obama grew more reticent, in Mr. Panetta’s view, because his legitimacy has been challenged more than any of his predecessors by accusations like the unsubstantiated claim that he was not born in the United States. “Those challenges have encouraged the president’s caution and defensiveness, which in turn has emboldened further challenges,” Mr. Panetta wrote.

The book, and the media blitz that accompanies it, becomes the latest headache for a White House that, like other second-term administrations, finds itself fending off friendly fire from veterans of the first. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. pushed back last week when asked about Mr. Panetta’s book during an appearance at Harvard.

“I’m finding that former administration officials, as soon as they leave, write books, which I think is inappropriate,” Mr. Biden said. When the audience laughed, he interjected: “No, I’m serious. I do think it’s inappropriate. At least give the guy a chance to get out of office.”

Mr. Panetta, unsurprisingly, disagreed. “I don’t think you put history on hold,” he said in the interview. “I’m one who believes you present history as you see it to the American people and they’re wise enough to make judgments about what’s right and wrong.”

Mr. Panetta sent a copy to the White House, although only after it was finished. He also went through separate clearance processes with the C.I.A. and Defense Department over potentially classified information. The C.I.A. engaged in a vigorous tug of war over what would be in the book, and Mr. Panetta said he took out some material, but nothing that changed the narrative.

The book traces Mr. Panetta’s life growing up the son of Italian immigrants in Northern California to his early days in politics as a moderate Republican in President Richard M. Nixon’s administration who was fired for pressing the desegregation of Southern schools. Mr. Panetta switched parties and was elected to Congress before becoming President Bill Clinton’s budget director and, later, White House chief of staff.

Surprised to be invited back to Washington by Mr. Obama, Mr. Panetta described masterminding the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and approving the drone strike that killed an American jihadist, Anwar al-Awlaki. He said he felt hamstrung by a White House that centralized decision-making and tried to control his contacts with lawmakers and journalists. “In fact, several times when I reached out to Congress or the press without prior White House approval,” he wrote, “I was chastised for it.”

He opposed an early version of the prisoner swap for the captured Army Sgt.Bowe Bergdahl because “I did not believe it was fair to trade five for one.” And he defended the failure of the military to reach Benghazi, Libya, when a diplomatic post came under attack. “We moved as quickly as we could,” he wrote, “but this took place too far away for our forces to reach them in time.”

Now 76, Mr. Panetta said he hoped to inspire young people with his story but lamented the dysfunction in Washington. He has no further plans for public office. Instead, he said, he is focusing now on his walnut farm.

“I’m dealing with a different set of nuts,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/w...panetta-tells-of-frustrations-with-obama.html
 
Leon Panetta, other former Obama subordinates show stunning disloyalty

Aspiring Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, scheduled a big Washington speech for Monday to condemn President Obama’s defense policy. But an unexpected competitor beat him to the punch.

Leon Panetta, in an interview with USA Today’s Susan Page published just before Jindal’s speech, criticized Obama in harsh terms that would have been dismissed as partisan sniping — if Panetta weren’t a Democrat who had served as Obama’s CIA director and secretary of defense.

Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. View Archive
Panetta criticized his former boss for having “lost his way” — allowing the power vacuum in Iraq that created the Islamic State, rejecting Panetta’s and Hillary Clinton’s advice to arm the Syrian rebels and failing to enforce his own “red line” barring Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

The interview was timed with this week’s launch ofPanetta’s book, in which he wrote that Obama “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.” Panetta also wrote of Obama’s “frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause” and his tendency to rely “on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”

So when Jindal arrived at the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Monday morning, all he really had to do to blame Obama for the world’s woes was to quote Panetta.


“How did we get to this point?” Jindal asked. “Just ask the people who can be honest about what happened. Ask former defense secretary Leon Panetta.”

In a news conference following the speech, I asked Jindal to elaborate. Panetta “is now the latest in a series of officials who have served in this administration coming out and saying from the inside they saw some of the dangerous mistakes this president has made,” the governor said. “Secretary Panetta and others are echoing what is obvious from the outside, but it’s more powerful when it’s coming from people on the inside.”

George W. Bush got criticism from former advisers (Paul O’Neill, John DiIulio), as did Bill Clinton (George Stephanopoulos, Dick Morris), but this level of disloyalty is stunning, even though it is softened with praise for Obama’s intellect.

At the start of the year, Robert Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary,wrote a memoir full of criticism of Obama’s handling of Afghanistan, saying Obama made military decisions based on political considerations. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who also published a book this year, criticized Obama for rejecting her advice on Syria and mocked the “Don’t do stupid stuff” phrase used by administration officials to describe Obama’s doctrine.

The lack of message discipline is puzzling, because Obama rewards and promotes loyalists. But he’s a cerebral leader, and he may lack the personal attachments that make aides want to charge the hill for him. Also, as MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald tweeted in response to a question I posed, Panetta, Gates and Clinton didn’t owe their careers to Obama. Clinton was a rival, Gates was a Bush holdover, and Panetta is a Democratic eminence grise. Loyalty didn’t trump book sales — or Clinton’s need to distance herself from Obama before a presidential run.

But there’s also David Axelrod, long Obama’s loyal strategist, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Obama made “a mistake” in saying his economic policies will be on the ballot next month. In quibbling with his old boss, Axelrod followed a path well worn by former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs, who once accused his old boss of “exceedingly passive” action.

Obama’s most loyal mouthpiece at the moment may be Vice President Biden, who in a speech at Harvard last week condemned as “inappropriate” the books by former administration officials. But having Biden speak for you is of dubious value: The vice president’s criticism of Panetta was overshadowed by loose remarks in that same speech that led Biden to apologize to the governments of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.


Whatever causes Obama’s difficulty inspiring loyalty, his failure is delighting conservatives and Republicans.

After Jindal’s speech referencing Panetta, Dov Zakheim, a former Bush Pentagon official, rose during the question period to add that “Panetta, who’s really a straight shooter, complains that when he argued against the sequester, he had nobody to back him up.” Zakheim also noted that Obama “completely jettisoned” an earlier Pentagon budget proposed by Gates — a topic discussed in the Gates memoir.

Jindal embraced Panetta as if he had just endorsed the Louisianan’s presidential campaign. “I think it took a lot of courage to tell that truth,” he said. “Secretary Panetta was, in coming out publicly criticizing the president, saying he still has two years to reverse the dangers and the dangerous deterioration that’s happened this past six years.”

All Obama needs to do, Jindal said, is listen to “folks like me, folks like Leon Panetta.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ae4448-4d95-11e4-babe-e91da079cb8a_story.html
 
Chris Hayes Slams Maher’s ‘Racist’ Islam Panel: Why No Muslim Guests?

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took strong issue tonight with a Bill Maher panel on Islam involving a fight with Ben Affleck. Affleck told Maher and Sam Harris that they’re spouting some “gross, racist” views, and Hayes had to agree. He said, “Put me down in the Ben Affleck camp on this, strongly.”
Hayes found it particularly gross “that these are five non-Muslim guys sitting around talking about what ‘the Muslims’ think.” And while no one would say that’s offensive, Hayes offered that a similar panel discussion about the Jews conducted entirely by Christians disparaging their faith would come across far less positively.

Hayes showed a clip of Reza Aslan on CNN to show how much more enlightening it can be to engage with an actual practitioner of the Muslim faith rather than “speculating about their beliefs as if they’re not in the room.”

Watch the video here...
 
the panetta stuff is amazing.


I think the take away is the following.
The you can't trust the people a democrat president will hire... because if they competent they are disloyal.

Because you can't be a leftist and competent for very long.

I would love to see this guy under oath in the benghazi hearing.
Him in one room and Hillary in another testifying at the same time.
 
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Didn't Obama reach out to her recently...
He she tells in like we have been telling it for 6 years.
Obama (Pelosi and Reid) sold the people out.

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/10/12/Elizabeth-Warren-Obama-Picked-Wall-St-Not-The-People

Elizabeth Warren: Obama Picked Wall Street, Not The People
by DAN RIEHL 12 Oct 2014, 1:03 PM PDT 28POST A COMMENT
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While not completely turning on the Democrat in the White House, in an interview with Salon, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren wasn't exactly raving about his performance in the White House, either.
In 2011 Vanity Fair suggested Warren had been "pushed aside" for a prominent role in the administration.

Now, she seems ready to push back.





(Obama) picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.

... They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over. So I see both of those things and they both matter.
 
A top Democratic strategist tells The Hill President Barack Obama "should take a flamethrower to his office," clean house, and begin with new staff.
Democrats have struggled to defend and explain Obama's plunging popularity--a trend that stands to threaten vulnerable Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

According to Gallup, Obama's approval rating is down to just 39%.

"He needs dramatic change--it's not even a debatable point," a "prominent party strategist" told The Hill. "The general consensus [is] that the president is surrounded by people who do him more harm than good because they are more focused on pleasing him than they are challenging him or proposing a different course."

Former Clinton staffer and Democratic strategist Karen Finney agreed: "Any time you bring in new blood, it's a good idea."

However, with Obama's disinterest in management well-established Brookings Institution presidential scholar John Hudak said Obama's unlikely to suddenly take an interest in management.

"For a president so disinterested in management, it would be surprising to me if he suddenly became a proponent of better staffing and better management at the appointee level," said Hudak.

Whether an Obama staffing shakeup will come before the midterm elections is presently unclear.

Voters head to the polls in 23 days.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Govern...bama-Should-Take-a-Flamethrower-to-His-Office
 
These guys are are on the edge...its so nice seeing democrats saying the things we have all been wondering about for years. When will they rise up against the sobs who have been selling them out. Maybe its time.

Amnesty could be the nail in the coffin for these democrat group.

 
The Revolution eats its own: The left turns on ‘bigot’ Bill Maher

Whole books have been written about the disturbing trend on the nation’s college campuses to shield students form dissenting views points of view and speakers who question the progressive orthodoxy of the moment.

Conservatives have found themselves the primary targets of a vocal minority of students and influential professors who demand that colleges disinvite the divergent from speaking to students lest the matriculated engage in some unwanted critical thinking.

With conservative figures effectively banished from America’s most famously left wing campuses, the left’s Montagnards have turned on the reactionaries and deviationists within their ranks. The focus of the progressive has shifted from fighting for social justice to protecting the practitioners of injustice in the name of inclusivity and open mindedness. With headlines today dominated by tales of gross acts of barbarism and efforts to exterminate ancient minorities groups from the face of the Earth performed in the name of one religion, the far-left has embraced the beleaguered premise that Islam is under siege and needs defending.

Ayaan Hirsi Aliexperienced this discrimination by those who perceive themselves to be the most tolerant in the spring. This Somali-born women’s rights activist, a genuine victim of religious oppression with a harrowing and inspiring life’s story, was disinvited to address the student body at Brandeis University after a vocal minority demanded she be shunned. Her crime, in the eyes of her detractors, was that she was victimized by a group that the left views as repressed itself and is, thus, deserving of a little bloody vengeance.

Ali is not alone in calling out the Islamic world’s shift away from the values of the enlightenment. Even Fareed Zakaria, no subscriber to Huntington’s belief in a pending Clash of Civilizations, recently conceded that the Muslim world has a problem.

“There is a cancer of extremism within Islam today,”Zakaria wrote. “A small minority of Muslims celebrates violence and intolerance and harbors deeply reactionary attitudes toward women and minorities. While some confront these extremists, not enough do so, and the protests are not loud enough.”

He was defending remarks made by famously liberal comedian and noted critic of organized religion, Bill Maher. The host of HBO’sReal Time, a formerly celebrated figure on the left, has found himself the target of shaming for noting that the Islamic world is too accommodating to those who engage in illiberal practices like violence against women or the beheading of kafir. He further made the unimpeachable observation that wayward young people have taken to executing attacks on civilians in places like Ottawa, London, and New York City in the name of this religion. For this, over 2,500 students at the University of California, Berkeley, have demanded that the heretic Maher not be allowed to address the campus’s students.

“Bill Maher is a blatant bigot and racist who has no respect for the values UC Berkeley students and administration stand for,” read a petition on Change.org demanding Maher’s ostracism. “In a time where climate is a priority for all on campus, we cannot invite an individual who himself perpetuates a dangerous learning environment.”

One ponders why exposure to heterodoxy might create a “dangerous learning environment.” Perhaps there would be actual “learning” rather than the routinized reinforcement of preexisting beliefs, and we cannot have that.

A fascinating example of moral equivalency occurred this morning during a segment on MSNBC in which a campus speech advocate was forced to defend Maher against a spokesman for the Council on American–Islamic Relations who equated him with a ranking member of the Klu Klux Klan spewing “Anti-Muslim hate.”

Fortunately for this CAIR spokesman, MSNBC’s Tamron Hall came to his rescue and insisted that he did not mean it when he directly compared UC Berkeley’s invitation of Maher to speak with extending the same invitation to “the Grand Dragon of the KKK.” Hall said she found Maher’s remarks a little bigoted, too, but only because of his recent blanket condemnation of Muslim men as violent.

That is a fair critique, but Hall is making the free speech advocate’s point: criticizing speech deemed inaccurate or offensive is far more powerful than banishing it from the public forum. Hall’s determination to put her thumb on the scale in favor of the advocates of censorship here, however, indicates that she might not have as firm a faith in her convictions as she suggests.

The revolution eats its own. Robespierre met his end under the same blade to which he had condemned hundreds of others. Zinoviev and Kamenev became victims of the very terror they endorsed when they stood alongside Stalin at the 13th Congress. An ideology which draws its authority from its supposed victimization cannot exist without a victimizer, and such an ideology inevitably turns to purging its allies. Bill Maher was, and likely remains, an ally of the left which will continue to be suspicious of organized religion. But, after being targeted for censorship only for displaying intellectual consistency, he is certainly a bit more wary of his erstwhile friends.
 
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