Munich Conference

Barack Obama Ratings Falling Fast: Can He Revive His Popularity?

Ronald 17 Comments

A new CNN poll demonstrates that President Barack Obama’s popularity ratings are falling fast, and the question is whether he can revive his popularity, or will be seen as a failed President in the three remaining years of his Presidency.

53 percent now see him as not honest and trustworthy; only 40 percent consider him capable of operating the government effectively.

But 60 percent still believe he has a vision for the country’s future; and 70 percent still see him as likable, but even those numbers are lower.

Obama still, however, is seen in a positive way personally overall, but his ability to get things done has suffered dramatically in 2013, and particularly over the massive failure of the launch of ObamaCare.

And now, there is new conflict over the deal with Iran, with many seeing it as a disaster in the making, almost like a Munich 1938 agreement, which led to World War II. The word being bandied about is “appeasement”.

The immigration bill is stalled in Congress, and the likelihood of any kind of cooperation with the Republicans in Congress seem highly doubtful.

So the question is what will happen in the next three years, and it is anyone’s guess as to how Obama will fare, and look in the eyes of history.

A Very Dangerous Time: The Iran Nuclear Deal

Ronald 11 Comments

One cannot easily decide if the announcement of the Iran nuclear deal last night is a moment to celebrate or to condemn. The US, Great Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany came to an agreement which is being much questioned by many diplomatic observers.

The history of Iran’s dealings with the West makes one pause and wonder how anyone can trust the fundamentalist Islamic regime,

This is not an issue of the Iranian people, but rather the Iranian government.

With Israel and the Arab nations (including Saudi Arabia) for once in agreement, all of them alarmed at the growing influence of Iran in Syria, and their engagement with terrorist networks, the tendency would be to see any agreement with the Islamic regime as a ploy, and that we will soon face the reality that Iran is a nuclear power.

But if diplomacy does not work, then the likelihood of warfare in the Middle East beckons, and most Americans do not want our nation involved in another war.

The threat to the survival of Israel is a very worrisome aspect of all this, but it is more than that.

It is also an issue that Iran presents a threat to world peace unmatched since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 51 years ago.

The question is whether Barack Obama, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden et al know what they are doing, and whether in the future, we will look back on this as another “Munich”, when Great Britain and France made an ill fated deal with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the future of Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1938, which did not bring peace, but instead, within a short time, the outbreak of World War II.

So the author has a very mixed feeling, and a sense of foreboding, that the future is likely to be very gloomy, and lead to a dangerous, widespread war.