Casting Spells

Yemen: Another Obama Foreign Policy Success!
The evacuation of 125 United States Special Operations advisers from Yemen in the past two days is the latest blow to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism campaign, which is already struggling with significant setbacks in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in the volatile region, American officials said Sunday. (New York Times, 3/23/2015)

“This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” President B. Hussein Obama


Practices
But they did show that Mrs. Clinton’s top aides at times corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations. (New York Times, 3/23/2015)

Reminding us - once again - of the late William Safire's depiction of Hillary Clinton as a "congenital liar."


No Conflicts Here
When Mr. Mezvinsky and his partners began raising money in 2011 for a new hedge fund firm, Eaglevale Partners, a number of investors in the firm were longtime supporters of the Clintons, according to interviews and financial documents reviewed by The New York Times. Tens of millions of dollars raised by Eaglevale can be attributed to investors with some relationship or link to the Clintons.
...
Mr. Mezvinsky is a Stanford graduate who is the child of political parents himself. His father, Edward M. Mezvinsky, was a two-term member of Congress from Iowa, and his mother, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, served a term in Congress from Pennsylvania. (New York Times, 3/23/2015)

First, a reminder to all that the Clinton's son-in-law is a hedge fund executive. How Hillary is going to square this with the Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrat party is anyone's guess.

And then there is the small matter of Edward M. Mezvinsky. What is the New York Times forgetting to tell us? Thinking..... Oh, that's right! It's this:

His father, Ed Mezvinsky, was a two-term Democratic congressman, representing Iowa’s first congressional district from 1973 to 1977. But in 2002, the former congressman pleaded guilty to swindling more than $10 million from family and friends in a Ponzi-esque scheme. (abcnews.com, 9/27/2014)

Perhaps the New York Times did not know this. Or - and it pains us to even think this - Times reporters knew it and simply chose to omit it because they are dishonest journalists. 


Coffee Black
Howard D. Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, said in a letter to employees on Sunday that baristas would no longer be encouraged to write the phrase “Race Together” on customers’ coffee cups, drawing to a close a widely derided component of the company’s plan to promote a discussion on racial issues. (New York Times, 3/23/2015)

Sources say that Starbucks intends shortly to roll out a new communication campaign in which baristas will ask customers to rate the job performance of President Obama on a scale of 1 (high) to 10 (low). All customers who rate him 5 or below will be given a free latte. 


We Can Breathe (Again)
Giving implicit credence to the named sources who described Michael Brown as having his hands up as he was fired on by Officer Darren Wilson, I criticized the use of unnamed sources who offered opposing information: They said that the officer had reason to fear Mr. Brown. I even went so far as to call those unnamed sources “ghosts” because readers had so little ability to evaluate their identity and credibility... But I want to go further now and say that what I wrote was substantially flawed. (Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor, New York Times, 3/23/2015)

The New York Times confesses. Too bad they do not put it on the front page...as they did the initial slander. 


Wordy
“We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region,” Mr. Obama said in the interview, which was taped Friday. (Wall Street Journal, 3/23/2015)

Obama on Netanyahu. 

And we took Obama at this word when he said that we could keep our health insurance....

Don't Forget to Pay Your Obamacare Tax Penalties

Failure to Improve
Gov. Peter Shumlin says the state will consider abandoning the Vermont Health Connect insurance exchange and moving to a federally supported system if the state-based marketplace fails to improve.

"We now have a vendor with a proven delivery record to finish the job," Shumlin said in a statement. "Ideally, Vermonters will continue to benefit from the Vermont-focused health insurance marketplace that we all envisioned, a system that builds upon our history of health reform and advances our goal of health coverage for all Vermonters.

"But if our system can't deliver for Vermonters by next fall," Shumlin continued, "we'll need to take action to move permanently to a system that can." Vermont Health Connect has suffered back-end technological problems and cost overruns since launching in October 2013. (Burlington Free Press, 3/20/2015)

So everything is going swimmingly as far as health care reform in Vermont goes...except for that pesky website. Which is where people go to buy health care. (As a user of VHC we can confirm: it is a nightmare). 

And how about that tough accountability from Gov. Shumlin? 'If we can't fix the website - two years after its launch, mind you - we are going to abandon it!'


The Logic of Obama's Foreign Policy
The sharpened tone indicates that the Obama administration may be re-evaluating its relationship with its closest ally in the Middle East, having lost patience with Mr. Netanyahu in the closing days of an election campaign in which he spotlighted deep disagreements with President Obama over a Palestinian state and a nuclear deal with Iran.....The moves confirmed that instead of acting quickly to smooth over tensions with Mr. Netanyahu that burst to the fore in the weeks running up to the Israeli elections, the White House is stoking the acrimony. (New York Times, 3/21/2015)

Country Obama Improves Relations With: Cuba
Country Obama Wants to Isolate: Israel

Ready for Hillary: E-mail Scandal Officially Declared "Old News"

Questionable
The question moving forward for Mr. Obama may be whether he should essentially write off the Israeli prime minister in much the same way he has written off building any relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, another frequent antagonist. (New York Times, 3/18/2015)

Relationships that Obama has not written off (in fact they are thriving!) include: the Iranian mullahs and the Castro brothers.


Never Never Land
But personally, Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu have never become close, aides said. The Israeli prime minister is known for being difficult. James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, once barred Mr. Netanyahu, then a more junior government official, from the halls of the State Department. President Bill Clinton famously disliked Mr. Netanyahu. (New York Times, 3/18/2015)

Liberals are beside themselves that Netanyahu was resoundingly re-elected. They haven't been this upset since... well, since the recent U.S. mid-term elections. And so the New York Times decides that the best approach is to trash-talk Bibi.

Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell takes the democratic election of Netanyahu as a sign of the end of days. Helpfully, she interviews Palestinians who provide objective analyses of the horrible consequences that this election has for the region. 

Just kidding about the "objective" part!