Barrack Obama - The New Worst President Ever. And Hillary Will Only Be Worse.

I have always thought that Jimmy Carter was the worst president we have ever had. I never dreamt that anyone could possibly ever top him. The four Carter years were horrible. Unemployment skyrocketed. Inflation was at 13%. Interest rates rose to 20%. Gasoline was rationed. And that was just on the home front.

Outdoing his disastrous domestic record, Carter failed even more miserably in the foreign policy arena. Carter naively trusted the Soviet Union and within a month of having negotiated an arms control treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan.

The icing on Carter's foreign policy blunders cake was the Iran Embassy takeover in Tehran after the fall of the Shah. A crisis ensued with twenty U.S. diplomats captured and held hostage for more than a year by the revolutionary government.

Matters only got worse with Carter's week kneed response to the situation while cowering in the White House. It was deemed a Presidency under siege with TV news stations reminding us every day of the debacle with a graphic that told us how many days had elapsed since our diplomats had been captured.

And then Carter put the final exclamation point on his ineptness with a failed military rescue attempt that resulted in our helicopters crashing into the desert, killing 30 soldiers.

Iran immediately released the hostages after Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

But now we have a new contender for worst President ever. On the domestic front, unemployment (the real figures, not the ones thrown about that don't include people who have stopped looking for work) is currently at over 9%, the economy is barely growing in terms of GDP, Obamacare is causing health insurance premiums to become ridiculously expensive, and the U.S. is so deeply in debt that the interest alone is going to be devastating once rates rise to normal levels.

The only difference between the Carter years and Obama's eight years are interest rates, inflation, and cheap oil that has kept gasoline plentiful. Obama was unable to screw those things up as much as he tried.

On the foreign policy front, incredible as it may seem, Obama has surpassed Carter by a long shot in terms of blunders, misguided policies, and much more dangerous ramifications for the future.

Obama’s defense policies were a muddled mess from the start. He singlehandedly took a victory in Iraq and turned it into a devastating loss that left a power vacuum, instability, and the creation of a national security nightmare worse than Al Quaeda - ISIS.

He turned his back on Polish and Czech allies by pulling the plug on missile defense systems we promised them, appeasing the Russkies.

He has been reducing our military's capability to pre-World War II levels (and in the cae of the Navy, to World War I levels) while Russia and China have systematically expanded theirs. His threatened "red line" in Syria evaporated when his bluff was called and he created yet another breeding ground for ISIS. He backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian revolution. And, he has abandoned Israel.

Oops. Almost forgot. The highlight of Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State - the reset with Russia. Putin laughed in Obama's face immediately thereafter and invaded Crimea, knowing that Obama wouldn't lift a finger to stop him. Deja vu Jimmy Carter.

After all of the foregoing, is it any wonder that neither enemies nor allies take Obama seriously? You know it's bad when even Jimmy Carter had this to say about Obama's foreign policy legacy:

"On the world stage, I think [Obama’s accomplishments] have been minimal. I think he has done some good things domestically, like health reform and so forth. But on the world stage, just to be objective about it, I can’t think of many nations in the world where we have a better relationship now than when he took over.”

Ouch!

And with a year left in office, Obama has managed to take his ineffectiveness, ineptness, and naivete' to new heights in his recent dealings with Iran. He and his botox-polluted Secretary of State have managed to outdo Jimmy Carter in appeasement, coddling, pampering, and placation of the Mullahs in Iran while they openly give us the middle finger.

The latest nuclear arms deal ensures that Tehran will have nuclear capability in the immediate future. We have also loaded up the regime with cash, having delivered $400 Million a few days ago and  wire transferring an additional $1.3 Million this week. Add to that the bazillions in frozen funds that have been released after we lifted the sanctions on Iran.

Meanwhile, Tehran test launches missiles that have far reaching nuclear ramifications. It continues to take American citizens hostage. It captures our sailors at sea, and most recently it has had its pint sized motorboats threaten our navy ships.

Why does our current administration allow the world's greatest superpower to be repeatedly embarrassed, humbled, and humiliated by Iran without blinking an eye? At what point do we finally say enough is enough and stop letting this banana republic give us that middle finger while daring us to do something about it? 

Apparently, not until at least January of 2017 when President Obama is finally gone from office.

In case you hadn't heard, earlier this week four Iranian motorboats (no larger than what I used to have to go fishing) came within 300 yards of the USS Nitze and harassed the guided missile destroyer by, "...conducting a high speed intercept and closing within a short distance of Nitze despite repeated warnings" according to the U.S. Navy. How did we respond? By protesting and calling it "unsafe and unprofessional." 

Are you freaking kidding me? We allow a guided missile destroyer  to be "harassed" by four fishing boats?

Navy officials said that the Nitze tried to communicate with the Iranian vessels 12 times but received no response. It also fired 10 flares in the direction of two of the Iranian vessels. "The Iranian high rate of closure... created a dangerous, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation, including additional defensive measures by Nitze," the Navy official said.

Hey, here's a thought. Instead of protesting, instead of sitting with our thumbs up our rear ends, instead of getting all frazzled because they created a "harassing" situation, and instead of firing flares and worrying about defensive measures while our ships are in international waters where they have every right to be, how about you blow them the heck out of the water? 

How about that for sending a message. How about that for letting Tehran know that we're not going to take any more crap from them. How about that for letting the rest of the world know that we're done lying down, and we're done being the whipping boy for banana republics.

This latest incident is nothing new. Iran recently took a number of our sailors hostage when their vessels strayed into Iranian territorial waters and one of the vessels suffered engine problems. As repairs were underway, Iranian rapid attack crafts approached, seized the vessels, took our sailors hostage, and then paraded them in custody for the world to see what a toothless paper tiger we have become.

Last December, Iranian ships fired rockets near U.S. warship and other vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and a month later flew an unarmed drone over the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. And these incidents are nothing new. American Navy ships have reported some 300 incidents with Iranian vessels during 2015. Most of those “interactions” (as the Navy calls them) are considered safe or don’t rise to the level of harassment.

I'm just wondering here. Talking out loud, if you will. How do you think Russian warships would have responded to those 300-odd incidents? What do you think Vladimir Putin would have done if his Navy had been "harassed" by four puny fishing boats? Do you seriously believe that the Russian Navy would have fired flares, protested, and considered defensive measures? 

I think not. First of all, there would never have been a first incident. Have you ever seen any news reports of anything like this happening to a Russian Navy ship? I didn't think so. And if by chance, had anyone dared do to Russian ships what Iran has done to us it would have taken just one such incident. There would have been nothing left of whatever threat was in play. And there sure as you-know-what wouldn't have been the other 299 incidents because no one would have dared screw with Russia again.

Obama has turned the U.S. into a neutered, de-clawed cat that sits on the window sill while the other cats laugh at him. The American public knows it. A majority of Americans say the United States plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago according to the latest Pew poll.  An even larger majority of Americans believe that the U.S. is losing respect internationally. A whopping 70 percent believe that the United States is less respected than in the past.

These numbers have gone through the roof on Obama's watch. The number of folks saying that the U.S. is less powerful has more than doubled since 2004. The public’s sense that the United States has lost respect is up 15 percentage points since early 2012.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Obama will ride off into the sunset in a few months. The question becomes do we want four more years of his policies after he leaves. That's what Hillary Clinton stands for. She's not only been responsible for a good bit of the foreign policy disasters we've had since Obama took office, she's all aboard when it comes to Obama's domestic policies. 

We can't afford four more years of what we've had. Most of you out there believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. For Pete's sake let's change course before we completely destroy the greatest t country on earth. Hillary is not an option.