The Bonfire of the Humanities !

It's been a long time coming, but America's colleges and universities have finally descended into lunacy!

 Guess this doesn't besmirch Brandeis's Core Values

Three months ago, in May, Brandeis University banned Somali-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali as its commencement speaker as well as to receive an honorary degree, purporting that ''Ms Hirsi Ali's record of anti-Islam statements'' violates Brandeis's ''core values.''  The university's President H. Lawrence outed himself as another ass-kisser of Islam, bowed to complaints from Muslim students and some appeasing members of the faculty. It certainly was the graduating class's loss.

Ms Ali's reputation was based on her being a spokeswoman for Islamic women's subjugation and isolation, which was highlighted in her shocking book, INFIDEL, My Life (2007). She revealed that she was subjected to genital mutilation, while her father was in prison, by her grandmother at 5 years of age, knowing it was against her father's wishes. She attended an English-language school and was  impressed by the Qur'an and ''lived by the Book, and for the Book'' throughout her childhood. Her disenchantment with Islam came with 9/ll and while listening to Osama Bin Laden's justification for the attacks. She escaped from a forced marriage and in 2002 she renounced Islam and became an
atheist. She began to formulate a critique of Islam and its culture of suppression, hate and death and started publishing articles about it.

A few weeks later, higher education's ritualistic burning of college-commencement heretics spread to Smith College and Haverford College. Smith College announced the withdrawal of Christine Lagarde, the French head of the international Monetary Fund (IMF). And what might the problem be with Madame Lagarde, considered to be one of the world's most accomplished women?  An online petition signed by some 480 offended Smithies said the IMF is associated with ''imperialistic and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.''  With unmistakable French irony, Ms Lagarde withdrew ''to preserve the celebratory spirit'' of Smith's commencement.

The very next day, Haverford College's graduating ''intellectuals'' forced commencement speaker Robert J. Birgeneau ( photo right ) to withdraw. Get this!  Mr Birgeneau is the former chancellor of UC Berkeley, the Big Bang of political correctness. It gets better. Berkeley's Birgeneau is famous as an ardent defender of minority students, the LGBT community and undocumented illegal immigrants. What could possibly be wrong with this guy speaking at Haverford??? The Haverfordians were upset that in 2011 the Berkeley police used ''force'' against grotty Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza. They said Mr Birgeneau could speak at Haverford if he agreed to nine conditions, including his support for reparations for the victims of Berkeley's ''violence.'' In a letter, Mr Birgeneau replied, ''As a long time civil rights activist and firm supporter of nonviolence, I do not respond to untruthful, verbal attacks.'' (In other words, ''screw you!'')

Smith president, Kathleen McCartney, felt obliged to assert that she is ''committed to leading a college where differing views can be heard and debated with respect.'' And Haverford''s president, Daniel Weiss, wrote to the students that their demands ''read more like a jury issuing a verdict than as an invitation to a discussion or a request for shared learning.'' Mr Birgeneau, Ms McCartney, Mr Weiss and indeed many others in American academe must wonder what is happening to their world this year.
                              Here's a short explanation:  The disintegration of unbiased thought.

Years ago, when the academic left began to ostracize professors identified as ''conservative,'' university administrators stood aside or were complicit. The academic left adopted a notion espoused back then by a ''New Left'' German philosopher (Herbert Marcuse) -- who, unfortunately wasn't killed by the Nazis. He taught at Brandeis (1958 - 1965), coincidentally, and preached that many of the conservatives ideas were immoral and deserved to be suppressed. And so they were.

This shunning and isolation of ''conservative'' teachers by their left-wing deadshit colleagues (with many gutless liberals silent in acquiescence) weakened the foundation of American universities - freedom of inquiry and the speech rights in the First Amendment. No matter. University presidents, deans, department heads and boards of trustees watched or approved the erosion of their original intellectual framework. The ability of aggrieved professors and their students to concoct behaviour, ideas and words that violated political correctness got so loopy that the phrase itself became satirical -
 though not so funny to profs denied tenure on suspicion of incorrectness. Offensive books were banned and history texts rewritten to conform.

No one could possibly count the compromises of intellectual honesty made on American campuses to reach this point. It is fantastic that the liberal former head of Berkeley should have to sign a Maoist self-criticism to be able to speak at Haverford.  Meet America's Red Guards! 

These students at Brandeis, Smith, Haverford and hundreds of other U.S. colleges didn't discover illiberal intolerance on their own. It is fed to them three times a week by Marxist professors of mental conformity. After Brandeis banned Ms Hirsi Ali, the Harvard Crimson's editors wrote a rationalizing editorial, ''A Rightful Revocation.'' The legendary liberal Louis Brandeis (Harvard Law; First Amendment icon) must be spinning in his grave. (right)

Years ago, today's middle-aged liberals embraced in good faith ideas such as that the Western canon in literature or history should be expanded to include Africa, Asia, Naïve Americans and such. Fair enough. The activist academic left than grabbed the liberal's good faith and wrecked it, allowing the nuttiest professors to dumb down courses and even whole disciplines into tendentious gibberish. 

The Way I See It.....the slow disintegration of the humanities into what is virtually political propaganda on many campuses is no secret. Professors of economics and the hard sciences roll their eyes in embarrassment at what has happened to once respectable liberal-arts departments at their institutions. The bad professors drove out many good, untenured professors, and that includes smart young liberals. Most conservatives were wiped out long ago.

One might conclude. Who cares?  Parents are beginning to see that this is a $65,000-a-year scam that won't get their kids a job in an economy that wants quantification skills. Parents and students increasingly will flee the politicized nut-houses for apolitical MOOC''s - massive open online courses. Still, it's a tragedy. The loonies are becoming the public face of some once-revered repositories of the humanities.  Here's hoping the pendulum will swing back sooner than later.

The Spice that Prevents Fluoride from Destroying Your Brain !

In my last blog posting I outlined the many ways fluoride in our drinking water has the potential to damage the delicate tissues in our brain. I mentioned there are over 100 studies over the past ten years spelling out there was no doubt of the poisonous nature of this chemical. I even  revealed in the latest report in the March issue of the Lancet Neurology journal compared fluoride with lead, arsenic and cyanide. Unfortunately, fluoride is found everywhere today, from antibiotics to drinking water, from non-stick pans to toothpaste, making exposure inevitable. All the more reason why new research proving this common spice can prevent fluoride damage is so promising!


Fluoride's neurotoxicity has been the subject of academic debate for decades, and now a matter of  increasingly impassioned controversy among the general public, as well. From it's shocking history of it first being used in drinking water in Russian and Nazi concentration camps to chemically lobotomize captives, to its now well-known IQ lowering properties, to its ability to enhance the calcification of the Pineal Gland - the traditional  ''seat of the soul''.  Many people around the world are starting to ''wise-up'' and organize at the local and state-wide level to oust this ubiquitous toxicant from their municipal drinking water.


Now, a new study published in the Pharmacognosy Magazine titled, ''Curcumin attenuates neurotoxicity induced by fluoride: An in vivo evidence,'' add experimental support to the suspicion that fluoride is indeed a brain-damaging substance, also revealing that a natural spice-derived protective agent against the various health effects associated with this compound is available.

The study was authored by researchers from the Department of Zoology, University College of Science, in India, who have spent the past decade investigating the mechanisms through which fluoride induces severe neurogenerative changes in the mammalian brain, particularly in cells of the hippocampus and cerebral cortex (as was cited in the previous blog post). Curcumin is the medicinal compound found in the popular Indian spice Turmeric.


The study opens by describing the historical backdrop for concern about fluoride's significant and wide ranging toxicity:  ''Fluoride is probably the first inorganic ion which drew attention of the scientific world for its toxic effects and now its toxicity in drinking water is well-recognized a global problem. Health effect reports on fluoride exposure also includes various cancers, adverse reproductive activities, cardiovascular, and neurological diseases. And yet the world's media still criminally ignores notifying the public about this health threat. Perhaps not for long.''


Owing to these well-known mechanisms of fluoride associated neurodegeneration, the researchers identified the primary polyphenol in the spice Turmeric - known as Curcumin - as an ideal agent worth testing as a neuroprotective substance. Previous research on Curcumin indicates that it is capable of acting as an antioxidant in three distinct ways by protecting against: 1) singlet oxygen 2) hydroxyl radicals and 3) superoxide radical damage. Also, Curcumin appears to raise endogenous glutathione production in the brain, a major antioxidant defence system.


In order to assess the neurotoxic effects of fluoride and prove Curcumin's protective role against it, researchers randomly divided up mice into four groups, for 30 days. Control (no fluoride), Fluoride (in drinking water), Fluoride + Curcumin, and Curcumin (in order to measure the malondialdehyde (MDA) content in the brains of the treated mice. MDA is a well-known marker of oxidative stress/damage. As was expected, the fluoride only treatment group showed high MDA levels vs. the non-fluoride treated control. The fluoride + Curcumin group saw reduced MDA levels vs. the fluoride only group, demonstrating Curcumin's neuroprotective activity.


The study concluded: ''Our study thus demonstrates that a daily intake of fluoride results in increases in the LPO (lipid peroxidation, i.e. brain rancidity) as well as neurodegenerative changes in the neuron cell bodies of the hippocampal region. Supplementation with Curcumin significantly reduces the toxic effect of fluoride to near normal level by augmenting the antioxidant defence through its scavenging property and provides evidence for having a therapeutic role against oxidative stress.''


The Way I See It.....this is far from the first study to demonstrate Curcumin's remarkable brain-saving properties. From the perspective of the primary research alone, there are over two hundred peer-reviewed published studies indicating that Curcumin is the perfect neuroprotective agent. You can use this link to read for further information. http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/how-turmeric-can-save-aging-brain-dementia-and-premature-death.


Considering the many chemical insults we face on a daily basis in the post-industrial world, Turmeric (the main source of Curcumin may very well be the world's most important herb, with well over 600 evidence-based health applications. As I said before, it is criminal that the world's media doesn't expose these and many other positive findings and continues to ignore this serious, accumulative threat to the health of millions of people. Now YOU KNOW, it's up to you to tell every one you know.

Fluoride Toxicity No Longer a ''Conspiracy Theory'' !

It amazes me how many people still view the dangers posed to health from fluoride in the water supply as nothing more than a ''conspiracy theory'' - dismissed as a notion unsupported by any solid evidence. They say it's pseudoscience. It probably doesn't help matters that Wikipedia - that hugely flawed yet oft cited source of information on the internet peddles misinformation which clearly creates a misconception as to fluoride's adverse effects. Its page discussing fluoride toxicity states that ''the only generally accepted adverse effect of fluoride levels used for water fluoridation is dental fluorosis (see photo right) which can mottle children's teeth; this is mostly mild and usually of an aesthetic concern.'' Sure, as long it's not your child.

With a sizable number of people satisfied with this unfounded reassurance, little further research is conducted, reflecting the lazy manner in which some people are willing to take things at face value, regardless of the high stakes. After all, if they were to take the issue seriously enough to thoroughly check the evidence themselves they would find themselves dragged licking and screaming from their comfort zones, forced to question the veracity of widely held ''truths'' built on lies and deceptions.

Of course, mainstream studies outlining the deleterious effects (worse than fluorosis) of fluoride are commonplace - in 2006 the National Research Council released a 500 page review, which took 12 scientists over three years to produce and described in great detail why the U.S.'s EPA''s purportedly ''safe'' drinking water standard (4 ppm) needed to be reduced in order to protect human health. The report documents myriad potential hazards from fluoride exposure, including damage to the bones, brain, and various glands of the endocrine system. According to Dr Bob Carlton PhD a former risk-assessment scientist at EPA and President of the Union of Government Scientists, this report ''should be the center piece of every discussion on fluoridation, it changes everything.' Fluoridation will not prevent tooth decay.'' 

More recently a Harvard study funded by the National Institutes of Health confirmed the fluoride lowers the IQ of children. The adverse effects of high concentrations of fluoride in the water supply were summarized by the report from Environmental Health Perspectives:  ''We specifically targeted areas in rural China that have not been tested before, thus complementing the studies that have included in previous review and reports. Findings from our meta-analyses of 27 studies published over 22 years suggest that fluoride may be a developmental neurotoxin that effects a child's brain development at exposures much below those that cause toxicity in adults.''

Given the wealth of other studies which have drawn similar conclusions, its perhaps remarkable that this hasn't been fully accepted in the scientific community, particularly dentists. and by the general population at large. Additional studies have found other negative effects of fluoride on the human brain including: 
1)  Formation of beta-amyloid plaques (the classic brain abnormality in Alzheimer''s Disease).
2)  Damage to your Hippocampus (associated with memory and spatial navigation)
3)  Impairs antioxidant defence systems
4) Accumulation of fluoride in your Pineal Gland (which produces melatonin which controls sleep/wake cycle, also known as ''the third eye'')'
5)  Damages Purkinje Cells (located in the cerebellum and controls motor coordination)
6)  Exacerbation of lesions induced by iodine deficiency

In March of this year, the journal  Lancet Neurology (see panel on left) compared fluoride to lead, arsenic, methyl mercury and other chemical toxins, and reclassified it as a developmental neurotoxin. Adding to the above list of detrimental effects of fluoride, the report explained how neurotoxins can cause widespread brain disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities, and other cognitive impairments. It would be criminal for this revelation to be further ignored!

The Way I See It....there appears to be only a ''fringe'' section of the populous against fluoride (and clearly the lack of mainstream media coverage has a great deal to do with this misconception), but a sizable scientific community exists fighting to have it removed. An increasingly informed number of communities are also fighting to have it removed from their drinking water.

Perhaps, with the release of the Lancet report, the ''conspiracy theory'' response to those pointing out the dangers of water fluoridation can finally be dropped and a concerted movement to end the poisoning of our water supplies by the dental profession in their ludicrous assumption that drinking this poison will allow it, after it washes over every delicate organ, gland and tissue, to end up fighting cavities in our mouth. To me that is not only criminal but the height of scientific gullibility.

Warmist leader Al Gore Gutted By Climate Reality !

The myth of Arctic meltdown is caught out. Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker now and covers 1.7 million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago....despite Al Gore's prediction seven years ago, it would be Ice-Free by now. An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago has expanded for the second year in a row.

The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ''The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff.'' he said. ''It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Only seven years from now!''  Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Noble Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. Far from vanishing the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession - with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.

The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by NASA. These reveal that - as of  three weeks ago - the ice cover was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years - an impressive 43 per cent.

Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different message, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise! Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting. Professor Andrew Shephard, of Leeds University and University College, London, an expert in climate satellite monitoring, said last week; ''It is clear from the measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a significant recovery in the thickness over the past year. It seems that an unusually cool summer in 2013 allowed more ice to survive through to last winter. This means that the Arctic sea ice pack is thicker and stronger than usual, and this should be taken into account when making predictions of its future.''

Yet for years, many have been claiming that the Arctic is in an ''irrevocable death spiral'', with imminent ice-free summers bound to trigger further disasters. These include gigantic releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen Arctic deposits, and accelerated global warming caused by the fact that heat from the sun will no longer be reflected back by the ice into space. Judith Curry, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said; ''The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.''

It's amazing that the warmists snouts were so deep into the government subsidies trough that they didn't take notice of the pause in global warming over the past 19 years!  (See Chart on right) And even now, they and their brainwashed political cronies can't come around and admit they got it wrong. Those who just a few years ago  were warning of ice-free summers by 2014 included US Secretary of State John Kerry, who made the same bogus prediction in 2009, while Mr Gore has repeated it numerous times - notably in a speech to world leaders at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen (in the middle of a huge snow storm), in an effort to persuade them to agree to a new emissions treaty. Damn Hypocrite !

Meanwhile the South Pole also has the Warmists (the real Deniers) flummoxed !

Remember warmist scientist Chris Turney and his Ship of Fools last December? (See my posting 3 January, 2014 - Ship of Fools: Doomed by Wishful Thinking).  Chris is a professor of climate change (another trough feeder) at Australia's University of New South Wales, said it was ''silly'' to suggest he and 73 others aboard the MV Akademic Shokalskiy were trapped in the ice they'd sought to prove had melted. He remained adamant that sea ice IS melting, even as the boat remained trapped in the frozen sea.  ''Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here, where we were trapped,  ice is building up,'' his Australian Antarctic Expedition said in a statement.

Sea ice disappearing????  Anthony Watts now reports;  ''The Antarctic Sea Ice Extent on September 13th may have set a NEW all time record (at least for the satellite era, we don't have data prior to that.''  So who are the Deniers now? Satellites have never detected so much Antarctic sea ice before, (see photo above) which leaves warmists blaming....you know what:
          CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to grater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.

But what warming atmosphere?  Hasn't he even bothered to see the IPCC had drawn attention to an apparent levelling-off of globally-averaged temperatures at the 15 year mark?  Professor Ross McKitrick studied land and ocean temperatures since 1850. He also compared this to satellite data from 1979 to 2014. Trends in this data revealed global warming has been on pause for 19 years now. And it has been on hiatus for between 16 and 26 years in the lower troposphere - the lowest portion of the Earth's atmosphere, so it wouldn't come near the ability of it to change wind patterns.  So, Mr Tony Worby ''You're dreaming or you are lying.''  This is ''the science''.  Why do warmists keep ignoring it? 

The Way I See It.....The UN has outed itself with a cynical stunt. What with ''the science'' against the faith it has so frantically promoted, the United Nation's IPCC searches for someone who will turn the debate. Note well: it's looking for someone who isn't a scientist but who can play the guilt, racial politics, gender politics and victimhood.  The UN is looking for a young woman to be the ''Malala'' of the climate change movement, serving as a voice that will energize the opening session of the 2014 Climate Summit, being held on September 23rd in New York City.

The organization has put out a call for a woman under 30 and has to be from a developing country and must have a background that includes advocacy on climate change or work implementing climate mitigation or adaptation solutions. So far, the call for applications has drawn 544 women, who emailed short videos of the themselves in all their brainwashed innocence to the Secretary-General's office, showing they can persuade world leaders to act on climate change.  See, this is no longer about science at all, just a religious crusade.  Pathetic and hypocritical.

Is President Obama America's Islamist-in-Chief ?

A disturbing set of developments has come about recently, all of them brought about by Barack Hussein Obama. Like puzzle pieces, they begin to fall into place. And the picture that is beginning to emerge is not a pretty one.

The first piece: 70,000 American-Trained Taliban:  Paul Sperry, of the New York Post, has reported that the recent assassination of an American general by Taliban terrorist has exposed what he calls ''the lunacy of the administration's Afghanistan strategy.'' 

Under orders from President Obama, the military is now training Taliban terrorists, recruiting 7,000 a month -- often eschewing background check -- to fill the ranks of what is now a 350,000-member ''SECURITY FORCE''.  Many of those hired have been imprisoned terrorists, released as part of a government-sponsored amnesty and reintegration program that is paying ex-Taliban warriors to join the government.

These American-trained Jihadis will surely end up being the ones who rise quickly to command level, once the American troops have departed Afghanistan. And, in the meantime=me, they pose an ongoing security threat to American military personnel at the highest levels. And is it just possible that some of these Jihadis might pose a threat to the integrity of the American homeland, even now?

Secondly, Obama ordered the release of Caliph Ibrahim, the now present head of the new Islamic State, from Camp Bucca in Afghanistan, in 2009. Back then he was called Au Bakr Baghdadi, and, upon his release, is known to have uttered the following words to his former prison guards; ''I will see you guys in New York.''

President Obama has allowed the Islamic State to grow and prosper. When this group of thugs were into taking control of the rebellion against Syria's Bashar Al-Assard off of the initial freedom fighters to make it there mission to turn Syria into an Islamic state, Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Libya secretly appropriating Gadhafi's weapons stash. With the help of White House sanctioning the CIA covertly was shipping these weapons to the jihadists through Turkey, without proper safeguards and regard for their future intentions.. The die was cast for these militants to be strengthened by the U.S.A.'s weapons undercover help.

Thirdly, as the fighting in Syria was progressing and ISIS became more powerful daily, the conflict was attracting many US and European Muslim passport holders to come and participate. The question now is will American Jihadis be allowed to return to America, after having trained with the newly upgraded Islamic State, with as much ease as the Boston Bombers?,  Remember them? Americans need to remember that the Russians actually warned the Obama people about Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsaraev, but they still were cleared by the Obama FBI for entry into the country anyway.

And strangely, it was the Obama White House that insisted on mirandizing and protecting Dzhokar by reading him his rights and shutting him up to protect him, before it was legally necessary or called for. And mysteriously, not one media outlet questioned the controversial legal moves.

A good question with regard to Obama Administration policy might be this: With such little enforcement of the Mexican border and having such permissive policies in place elsewhere why is Obama allowing radical Muslims ingress to the country. Is Obama actually, directly or indirectly, working to sponsor Islamist attacks against Americans?

Fourthly, in the past, Muslim immigrants were limited in number to 50,000 a year. Part of the reason

for this was the need to do thorough background checks on them to be sure that those coming into America had no connections to terror groups or networks supporting terror through there activities. Obama has ordered that the door be opened to 100,000 immigrants a year of Muslim background. And background checks have been made easier to pass!

Fifthly, the recent shocking deal President Obama had managed to cut with the release of an American soldier that seems only to help extremist Muslims. The released soldier is Bowe Bergdahl, to all indications a Jihadi Muslim himself -- a deserter who abandoned his fellow soldiers in search of the Taliban, so that he might, allegedly, help them in their efforts to kill Americans. If fact four of his brothers-in-arms were killed searching for him. Obama sanctioned the release of the five most dangerous Jihadis in Gitmo for Bergdahl,  much to the exasperation of the U.S. Military command. They comprised the Taliban Dream Team, (left below) and they will most assuredly return to the fight against

America after their rest and recuperation in a five-star hotel resort in Abu Dhabi.

And last-but-not-least, Barack Obama's dithering on having Congress draw up a strong immigration policy and his continuous talk of an amnesty has created a Southern border insecurity nightmare. Many U.S.  officials concerns keep falling on his deaf ears that the Islamic State is planning to attack the United States by crossing the porous region with Mexico. Even Texas Governor, Rick Perry, has already warned that the militants probably are lying in wait in some border towns on the Mexican side. Just recently, because Mexico does so little to police its own border that three Ukrainians with long criminal records easily walked into Texas. He added that ''it is a very real possibility that Islamist terrorists may have already entered the United States.''

The Way I See It......if President Barack Hussein Obama is not a jihadist sympathizer, bent on allowing a ''Muslim Death Cult'' to succeed in establishing a new Islamic Caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, then he and his administration have been  just damn fools these past five years. We have watched as he has allowed a bunch of al-Qaeda militants in Syria, transform into, first, ISIS then growing into ISIL and now with a much broader agenda....The Islamic State.

Today, there are more terrorist groups than there were before 9/11. After all the sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, why do we find ourselves in a more dangerous world? This administration's  dereliction-of-duty has both sins of action and inaction, which is what happens when you are flailing around without careful strategic thinking. The Islamic State is now more focused on waging war as guerrillas and insurgents with ample expertise using social media for propaganda, fund raising and recruiting. Only time will tell if Western leaders get some backbones to seriously take them on. ''Peace through Strength'' only works if you have and show strength.  Where's Ronald Reagan when you need him?

What ''Leading-from-Behind'' Looks Like in a Beige Suit !

Is Barack Obama the most useless president in US history?  I do not think Barack Obama is a closet sympathizer of Muslim Jihadists bent on our destruction, but God help me I suddenly understand how some have arrived at that conclusion. More on that in an up-coming posting on this blog site.

He was in a  taupe suit facing a dumb-founded press corps and to stand up to tell the world that America was going to do zero to help Ukraine and have no strategy to defeat ISIS is just insane.

This totally beige-moment was so shocking that the White House staff had to go into complete and total damage control afterwards is telling. But even their damage control was insufficient. They told Wolf Blitzer, anchor and journalist for CNN, the White House had a strategy, just not a strategy to go after them in Syria.

Here's Josh Earnest, current Press Secretary and Assistant to the President, doing damage control on CNN:
  ''The president was asked a specific question about what approach he was going to pursue when it came to possible military action in Syria against ISIL. That was the specifc question he was asked and the president was explicit, that he is still waiting for plans that are being developed by the Pentagon for military options that he has for going into Syria.''

How long has Syria been a problem?  The President addressed the nation, a year ago, on September 10, about Syria and the actions we would take. But he said he would not get involved outside of forcing Syria to give up chemical weapons. His military leaders have insisted America do more, but the President dithered, much like he dithered trying to save James Foley, and now Steven Sotloff.

And what of the strategy to defeat ISIS in Iraq?  Just words and a few tactical missile strikes. More from the White House Press Secretary:

  ''But when it comes to confronting ISIL, the president has been very clear for months about what our comprehensive strategy is for confronting the ISIL threat in Iraq. It starts with a unified Iraq government, that can unite that country to meet the threat that's facing their country right now.''

   ''Secondly, it includes strengthening our relationship with the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, to make sure that they have the equipment ad training they need to take the  fight to ISIL on the ground in their country.'' 

    ''The third component of our strategy is engaging regional governments. It's certainly not in the interest of governments in that neighbourhood to have ISIL wreaking havoc and doing terrible acts of violence in their region.''

''The forth aspect of the strategy is engaging countries around the world in this effort.''

And then, of course, the fifth aspect of the strategy.....the fifth component, is the use of American military force.''

So to kill the bad guys the President has to let the Iraqis set up a new government, then Obama needs to rebuild relationships with people don't trust him (like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey), then he needs to engage regional governments who've taken to launching  strikes in Libya without telling us, then we need to sing kumbaya with the world....... As usual Obama now belatedly does something but very, very little. He is being shamed to stop his dithering and show some balls this crisis demands.

The Way I See It.....the president wants....to stay out of Iraq for probably and also certainly for political reasons. His bragging that he ended the war in Iraq has come around full circle and bit him on his embarrassed ass. He also wants to defeat ISIS and wants to do both. And the problem is, if you try to do both, you are going to do both mediocrely. And that's basically what happened.

I just don't think you can do both. ISIS is a pretty impressive organization and they have taken over. And for America to say it's going to leave it to the Iraqis to take care of ISIS strikes me as probably not an option that's going to be on the table. Expecting the Iraqis to be able to beat ISIS on their own is going to take months and ISIS can do a lot of damage in those months. And so I think this split-the-difference policy the president has adopted of trying to be in and out at the time is not going to be tenable. I suspect he has to get his hands dirty, suck up his pride, and is going to have to go in a little further....he has no more time to dawdle! How many will die because of this President and his foolishness????