Obama V. Israel

This isn't over. https://t.co/VB9gWRQmac

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 30, 2016

The Palestinian Authority has been in contact with the Obama administration and European countries about the possibility of taking more UN action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before President Obama leaves office next month, a senior PA official told Breitbart Jerusalem....

REPUBLICANS IN LAME-DUCK CONGRESS LOOK FORWARD TO NEXT YEAR

◼ link - Donald Lambro/Human Events

The nation’s divided Congress battled down to the wire this week over its budget for the rest of this fiscal year, hoping to avoid a government shutdown.

The $1.01 trillion spending bill must be passed before midnight Thursday, though at this writing few were placing any bets on meeting that deadline. Still, Congress has dodged budget deadlines before and may do so again — if for no other reason than to drive a stake through the heart of a bitterly divided, unpopular legislature that can’t seem to agree on anything except going home for the holidays.

This was the last gasp of a lame-duck Congress before the Republicans can welcome their strengthened majority in the House and take control of the Senate in January — and begin to chart a new agenda to deal with America’s most pressing problems....

Return of the Zombie Congress (and Senate)

◼ Dozens of politicians were replaced with fresh faces yesterday, but the losers don’t have to vacate their offices for two months. We must be more vigilant than ever right now. - Jim DeMint/Daily Signal

While “Lame Duck” is the standard parlance in D.C., I prefer the more colorful term “Zombie Congress,” popularized in recent years by George Will and others. It more aptly conveys the peril of the situation. Zombie legislators are those unhappy senators and representatives who have been voted out of office, yet still stagger dutifully back to Washington for a month or so before Christmas break. ‘Tis the season when they are most dangerous.

Unlike their B-movie counterparts, these zombies don’t seek brains, though they could probably use some. With no electorate to appease, the newly politically “deceased” members have no incentive to restrain their baser urges to feast upon the hard-earned tax dollars of the living.

Beware a wounded Obama

◼ No matter what the exact outcome of Tuesday’s elections, there is little doubt that President Obama will come out of it wounded. - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein

Whether or not Republicans take over the Senate, they will certainly gain seats. Even if Democrats manage to eke out a victory that maintains narrow control of the chamber, it will only be because their candidates in close races did everything they could to distance themselves from Obama.

Either way, Obama will be a lame duck president. Voters will have rebuked him and his policies. He won’t have the ability to pass major legislation, and the focus of the political world will quickly turn to candidates vying to replace him.

But being a lame duck president isn’t the same as being without power. On issues including healthcare, environmental policy, immigration, and national security, Obama has already displayed a willingness to bypass Congress to pursue his goals.

If there were anything holding him back up to this point, it was either that he was facing re-election or he was somewhat hesitant to weaken Democratic chances in an election year that would determine the composition of Congress during his last two years in office.....

Obama has already caved in to the Iranians on uranium enrichment, plutonium development, and its missile program. And the New York Times has reported that if a final agreement with Iran is reached, Obama “will do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on it.”

In short, a wounded Obama will still have many tools at his disposal for advancing his agenda, with much less reason to avoid deploying them.

There has never, ever, been a more pitiful presser than the one conducted last week by President Obama.

◼ The beginning of the end for Barack Obama - Joseph Curl/Washington Times

In a nutshell, he said sure, everything’s a mess, but he just didn’t know. Introspective for the first time, he acknowledged he “fumbled the rollout” of Obamacare, said his “you can keep it” pledge “ended up not being accurate” and admitted that his “credibility” is in the dumper. And he tossed out this gem: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Ya think?

...Twenty hours after Mr. Obama’s depressing presser, 39 Democrats joined Republicans to support the “Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013.” And just like that, No. 44 became a lame duck, eviscerated and emasculated. The shutdown? Ancient history. The fractured Republican Party? Gone with the wind.

Instead, the headlines are suddenly focused on dissension in the Democratic Party, in Mr. Obama’s Cabinet, and in Congress, where lawmakers are running for cover over Obamacare, abandoning the party’s standard-bearer to save their own political skins. In the blink of an eye, Mr. Obama’s approval rating plunged to 39 percent — exactly where George W. Bush found himself after weeks of dire Katrina coverage.

“When you take a look at history, when presidents in their second terms drop on credibility, trust and approval, they never come back from that,” former Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said last week. “When we look back three years from now at the end of his presidency, we’re going to all say this was the tipping point of his relevancy.”



◼ When the Obama Magic Died - Fouad Ajami/Real Clear Politics

The current troubles of the Obama presidency can be read back into its beginnings. Rule by personal charisma has met its proper fate. The spell has been broken, and the magician stands exposed. We need no pollsters to tell us of the loss of faith in Mr. Obama's policies—and, more significantly, in the man himself. Charisma is like that....

"Nobody listens to what he says anymore, nobody is interested in winning his approval and nobody much cares if he thinks they have 'let the country down'"

◼ Barack Obama can't pass gun control despite 90 per cent support. Truly, he is a lame-duck president - Tim Stanley/The Telegraph

Whatever your position on gun control, yesterday’s events are a damning indictment of Obama’s presidency – a flash of style, lots of soaring rhetoric and, when the votes are actually counted, little show for any of it. America has four more years of this lame-duck president telling them that it has let him down. If only he could tear up the Constitution and rule by diktat he might save himself a little disappointment. Alas, American democracy is a stickler for rules.

◼ It's been a bad first quarter of the second term for President Obama. - Althouse

1. It's been so bad that the media dropped their erstwhile foible of talking about everything that happens in terms of what it means for Obama. And here it is, the first lap of his new term, when there's more reason than usual to talk about how things are working out for the President.

◼ Emotional Obama vows gun control ‘without Congress’

President Obama was visibly angry during his press conference yesterday, voicing disappointment with the Senate for failing to pass an amendment requiring universal background checks for gun sales.