When the president says that Iran won't get nuclear armaments on his watch, he's right if the ayatollahs stick by his version of the so-far unestablished rules of the Lausanne negotiations. With all the disagreement as to what's in the unwritten agreement, Obama's claim may or may not have teeth. Either way, by his own admittance Iran will eventually obtain nuclear weapons (some in his hire say it already has the capacity), just not while he's in office.
According to President Obama, his administration has run a tight ship for the last six years and he denies anything detrimental has happened to the country while he's been standing sentry. That's his preferred legacy.
The economy, when he acknowledged it was deplorable, was all due to George W. Bush's lax job guarding the perimeters, allowing bank bandits and corporate raiders to infiltrate and make off with billions of dollars. The housing market, still in a basic slump, has been idle because of Bush's permitting toxic mortgage-backed securities to disenfranchise Americans. Foreign policy is still wallowing from Bush's ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, the bad press of an open Guantanamo Bay detention center and the Abu Ghraib scandal that Obama has said encouraged the rise of terrorism and, ultimately, ISIS.
By his words, President Obama has secured the border and restrained gang members, drug dealers and murderers from penetrating our towns and cities with vile intent to accost our citizens. In fact, he's done such an incredible job as sentinel that by his own hand he's opened the door to yet more illegal immigration, offering them access to government aid programs (health, housing and higher education) and citizenship. Obama has also opened his hand and heart to wipe out racism, sexism, ageism and ushered in a new world of harmony for the LGBT community.
All one has to do is listen to the president's continuing tale of success in all these arenas of domestic and foreign policy to know that the United States is stronger militarily, economically more viable and socially more accepting than ever before.
To swallow the foregoing is to lie back in your recliner and fade off into a Soma coma. Mark Steyn, April 8 on Fox News Channel, rattled off the exact opposite of the president's claims, not that the average media outlet follows the evidence any more than they did in Ferguson, Missouri.
This week, Homeland Security released information that they'd corralled hundreds of multinational gang members, directly contradicting Obama's assertion that the borders are secure. What hasn't been answered is whether the administration will compel immigration agents and law enforcement to release malefactors in abeyance of the law.
Iran, with whom the administration has enjoined negotiations to purportedly halt nuclear activity, in the company of five other nations and the U.N., has upped the ante in terror support of the Houthis' coup in Yemen. Iran's navy is repositioning warships in the Gulf of Aden on the premise of preventing piracy. Yemen, which President Obama touted as his poster child for success of his anti-terror policy, has collapsed into civil war with Iran assisting the aggressors who violently dislodged the American-allied government. Again, are the Iranian warships patrolling to halt piracy or is the intent to blockade aid to the legitimate government and the suffering Yemenis? It must be a relief to the Doctors Without Borders that their supply ship from Djibouti made port before Iran mistook it to be a pirate enterprise bent on selling misappropriated goods to the Houthis' enemies.
The administration's stance on gay rights promotion has been to support government crackdown on Christian business owners who, in an attempt to uphold their own religious beliefs, deny service to potential customers or abortifacients to employees. Obama's statements identifying people of color or professing other-than-Christians as disenfranchised minorities have incited further racial division and civil unrest. Divisiveness under the president's watch has reached such egregious levels that every incident involving alleged physical or emotional injury to OTW or OTC individuals receives biased commentary from the White House.
To hear President Obama describe his tenure in the Oval Office is to listen to a recitation of how every one of these perceived injustices lies at the hands of a previous administration and that he's fixed the problem. Else it is misleading and false reporting by conservative press that the economy, foreign policy or race/gender relations haven't improved under his "watch."
What are we to believe? The evidence of our eyes and ears or the tall tale from the Rose Garden? Rose-colored glasses might be the real ticket that President Obama insists on peddling.
Former newspaper publisher, A. Dru Kristenev, grew up in the publishing industry working every angle of a paper, from ad composition and sales, to personnel management, copy writing, and overseeing all editorial content. During her tenure as a news professional, Kristenev traveled internationally as a representative of the paper and, on separate occasions, non-profit organizations. Since 2007, Kristenev has authored five fact-filled political suspense novels, the Baron Series, and two non-fiction books, all available on Amazon. Carrying an M.S. degree and having taught at premier northwest universities, she is the trustee of Scribes’ College of Journalism, which mission is to train a new generation of journalists in biblical standards of reporting. More information about the college and how to support it can be obtained by contacting Kristenev at cw.o@earthlink.net.
ChangingWind (changingwind.org) is a solutions-centered Christian ministry.
