During his campaign, Barack Obama promised to reach out to Iran’s Ahmedinejad and pretty much every tin horn dictator without preconditions.
More recently Obama has decided to reach out directly to the Taliban:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that US officials were involved in preliminary talks with the Taliban to seek a political solution to the Afghan war but said he didn’t expect significant progress for months.
Gates also said recent gains on the ground in Afghanistan meant President Barack Obama would have “a lot of room for maneuver” when deciding how many troops to withdraw as he begins a limited US drawdown next month.
Almost a decade into the Afghan conflict, the American public has grown increasingly war-weary and the killing of Osama bin Laden and other leading Al-Qaeda figures in recent months is fueling calls for a rapid pullout.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced on Saturday that the United States was holding talks with the Taliban.
“I think there’s been outreach on the part of a number of countries, including the United States,” Gates confirmed to CNN, adding that the contact has been going on for “a few weeks maybe.”
Obama has decided to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood
The U.S. has decided to formally resume contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group – which does not recognize Israel – in a move that could further alienate some Jewish voters already skeptical of President Barack Obama, it was reported.
One senior U.S. official said the Brotherhood’s rise in political prominence after the forced departure of former President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year makes the American contact necessary.
and Obama is now reaching out to Islamists all across North Africa and the Middle East:
The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.
The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration’s realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm’s length.
Barack Obama reaches out to Islamists, dictators and the Taliban, but he won’t meet with members of Congress.
The White House effectively turned down an invitation by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell for President Barack Obama to visit his members on Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss raising the debt limit.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, while not directly saying the invitation had been rejected, said Obama did not need to hear Republicans tell him what they would not support.
That, Carney said, was “not a conversation worth having.”
In a press conference which found Obama acting like “a dick”, Obama aides said that Obama planned to portray Republicans as “infantile.”
Matt Nigrin at Politico put it this way
President Obama’s shellacking of Congress on Wednesday — suggesting that the leaders aren’t working hard enough and are acting childish..
Obama said:
“Right after we finished dealing with the government shutdown, averting a government shutdown, I called the leaders here together and said, ‘We’ve got to get this done.’ And I put Vice President Biden in charge of a process that, by the way, has made real progress. … I met with every single caucus for an hour to an hour and a half each. Republican senators, Democratic senators. Republican House, Democratic House. I’ve met with the leaders multiple times. At a certain point, they need to do their job.
Then he said
“They need to do their job.
And finally came this beauty:
And if by the end of the week, we have not seen substantial progress, then I think members of Congress need to understand, we’re going to, you know, start having to cancel things and stay here until we get it done.
Almost immediately after scolding Congress and “we’re going to…start having to cancel things and stay here until we get it done” Obama is leaving for Camp David and, presumably, more golf. Typically, Obama demands that everyone else sacrifice and “cancel things” in the debt ceiling issue while he exempts himself. And he has no time for much of anything other than fund raising.
So in summary, Obama reaches out to America’s enemies but he won’t reach out to Congress.
Whose side is he on?
"Obama has no plan to balance the budget -- ever." http://nrsc.org
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