While we're on the subject of Obama at a funeral

(Original Obama funeral issue here)

Specifically, Nelson Mandela's funeral, everybody is making note of the fact that he shook hands with Cuba's Castro, but Brietbart has the real story about shaking hand with Obama:

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that President Barack Obama had shaken hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. However, the UK Telegraph's Josie Ensor reported that Obama "was asked to take his seat just before reaching Mugabe." Complicating matters, another article in the UK Telegraph also claimed that Obama had shaken hands with Mugabe--in very similar terms to those used in the NBC article.

Breitbart News caught the discrepancy--and suddenly the NBC News article was corrected, with no notice.

Mugabe, in case you didn't know is not a nice guy.  

I'm not sure where the Obama handshake with Mugabe story goes, given the concerted attempt by the media to focus on what is perceived as the lesser of two evils to focus attention on the Castro handshake but I'm sure he hopes it just goes away.  It's not good for his brand.  And maybe this is nothing more than an editorial mix-up or incorrect information, but if that's the case a correction for the discrepancy should be made. Mugabe offends many in Obama's base as well as people's sensibilities in general.  that handshake has no upside while the progressives within the Democratic party might secretly cheer a Castro handshake.

In Obama's defense, maybe he just didn't know who this Mugabe guy was...it might have been 3 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Bonus Thursday Hillary Bash - Wrong on Syria circa 2011

It's never too early to dredge up the past on the de facto next president, because she does not deserve an uncontested coronation.

Via Weasel Zippers, 2011: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Describes Syria’s Assad As A “Reformer”… . Really? Why Hillary - what evidence supported that?

Hillary Clinton cannot handle the fabled 3 .a.m. call any more than her 2008 primary opponent Barack Obama could. She claims to have foreign policy credibility but she was wrong on the Russian rest, wrong on her own flight into Bosnia and wrong on Assad.  She has no foreign policy credibility. None.

Thursday Hillary Bash

Is he holding a joy buzzer or something?

Today's edition of Thursday Hillary Bash (an on-going attempt to poke holes in the rationale behind the coming coronation of Hillary Clinton as the next president in 2016) comes via Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner at National Review. The topic concerns Hillary Clinton's foreign policy short-comings;

I elaborated on Mrs. Clinton’s pronouncement in a Corner post a little over a year ago, citing to what Madame Secretary was telling the Arabic press (al-Ahram reporting) and tying it into the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood implementation of Erdogan’s strategy in Turkey: gradually impose sharia by exploiting Western progressives’ hostility to military governance – which is the only kind of governance in which Western liberalism has a chance to take root in a majority Islamic-supremacist society...

Here’s what Mrs. Clinton is telling the Arabic press:

Egyptian military authorities must cede power to the winner of the country’s first post-Mubarak presidential elections, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted Wednesday.

“We think that it is imperative that the military fulfill its promise to the Egyptian people to turn power over to the legitimate winner,” Clinton said in a discussion hosted at the State Department.

Some of the actions by the military leadership in past days were “clearly troubling,” Clinton said, sitting with former secretary of state James Baker at the event to support the creation of the first US museum for diplomacy. ”The military has to assume an appropriate role which is not to interfere with, dominate or try to subvert the constitutional authority,” she warned.

That’s the Turkey strategy in small compass. Erdogan exploited the bleating of American and European progressives to weaken Turkey’s pro-Western military — transferring control to the Islamist civilian government he controls, and installing Islamists loyal to him in place of the Kemalist military officers he has sacked. Interestingly, Mrs. Clinton does not have much to say about “subvert[ing] the constitutional authority” when Erdogan — who Obama hails as his closest regional ally — jails political opponents, military officers, and journalists.

The secretary of state paid lip-service to the need for the Brotherhood’s New Egypt to support “an inclusive democratic process, the rights of all Egyptians, women and men, Muslims and Christians, everyone has to be respected.” I’m sure Coptic Christians are very impressed, as are the smattering of authentic democrats whom the administration helped the Brotherhood steamroll.

Foreign policy expert? Ready for the 3 a.m. call?  Not by a long shot.

Obama's Middle East Policy - Does It Exist?

With Israel using an Iron Dome to halt the rainfall of missiles into Tel Aviv, and Egypt seemingly set to step in on the side of Hamas, with Iran so close to nuclear capability, one has to wonder if president Obama not only slept through the 3 a.m. phone call, he may have slept through the entire foreign policy portion of his presidency.  Obama's Middle East policy does not exist, everything he's done so far has been static isolated, flat-footed reaction to events moving at a pace he can't cope with.

The real question isn't whether Obama has a Middle East policy, but rather whether he can develop one before events in the region get out of hand.  Actually, I'm being overly harsh; the president has stated some policy on the Middle East.  What's missing, is strategy.

Obama: Politics before leadership (part 1)

With president Obama surging in the polls, now might be a good time to remind people of why he doesn't deserve re-election next year.

Let's start with Senior foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama and a little reminder of which Democrat is ready to handle a crisis;

And next, an example of a crisis unfolding, over months, with nary a cogent response from the Obama administration.

Politics before leadership, it doesn't matter how bad it gets, make sure you look good.

Obama's record: Taliban victory is a symptom

Fox News is reporting another attack on NATO forces in Afghanistan. Kabul is the location of the latest attack, which seems to be part of a Taliban ramping up of efforts on the heels of the Iraq pullout and ongoing Afghanistan troop draw down.

Afghanistan -- A U.S. official says all 13 NATO service members killed in a suicide bombing in the Afghan capital were American troops.

The Taliban is going to win the PR war.  Democrats constantly banged the drum that Bush failed to win the peace. Aside from being in the right place at the right time to kill Osama Bin Laden, president Obama has not done anything substantive to win the peace.  What's worse, is the fact that leading up to the eventual withdrawal  of U.S. and NATO forces, the Taliban is winning the PR war.  They'll eventually be able to claim (erroneously) that they drove the U.S. out.  It will create fear in the Afghan population.  They could bulldoze their way back into power.  They likely will.

It's symptomatic of a very large problem. Cluelessness.

Obama, 3 a.m. and the long walk from leadership

Is it just me, or will the President's switch from seeming nonchalance on the oil spill to one of potential face-time overkill something that isn't likely going to help his popularity too much?  He's dug himself a hole and there is no easy climb out of it here.