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The Testing of a President
By Gene Lalor

Macbeth: “Is this a dagger which I see before me…” Macbeth (II, i, 33)

I doubt President Obama sees any daggers, real or imagined, but he hopefully sees tests before him, tests which could serve the same purpose as daggers at America’s throat.

Vice President Biden, before he was VP Biden, had warned that tests would happen. Back in October, the prescient Joe said, “We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember, I said it standing here, if you don’t remember anything else I said: Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

Pal Joey apparently was muzzled, squelched, told to shut up shortly thereafter and never again spoke publically of testing “the mettle [the character] of this guy,” the President- Presumptive at the time, Senator Barack Hussein Obama.

Well, that test or tests, international and domestic, in political-speak, have now been “generated,” in real-speak they have “hit the fan,” and we shall shortly see the depth of Obama’s brilliance and character.

The domestic testing has been ongoing and is a carryover from the administration of Bush II. Mainly, but not exclusively, it has consisted of the banking, mortgage, economic mess. Only time will tell whether history assigns Obama, and therefore America, a passing grade.

At this point, Wall Street has evidently decided to give a resounding “F” to the new president and for his wonder boy, tax-cheating Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. Their mindless profligacy in tossing around a trillion here, a trillion there, of taxpayer dollars have been met with a clear vote of no confidence and a drop of thousands of points on the Dow.

After being clued in by Bill Clinton, Obama suspended his very peculiar gloom and doom, crisis here, crisis there, approach to inspiring Americans in favor of the pep-talky, “Hey, we can do it, folks!” But the damage had already been done.

Main Streeters and Wall Streeters seem to be thinking, Will the real president please stand up and do something constructive? Both should be cautioned not to expect much in that regard since Obama has admitted that he regards the stock market as nothing more than a “tracking poll” and neither he nor Michelle Obama own any stocks, according to their tax returns. So, who cares?

Obama’s other testing fields are overseas, in foreign nations and in international waters and so far he seems to have adopted a very diplomatic, hands-off, do nothing, wait and see approach.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, maniacal loose-cannon extraordinaire, thrives on war and rumors of war and gets his jollies by launching missiles and threats, recently including threats to shoot down civilian airliners near his airspace and warning of all-out war if we dare to shoot down his satellite.

The latest news out of Pyongyang is that the paranoid Kim Jong-il has cut his military hotline with South Korea and is in process of mobilizing his million man army. The reason? Fear of invasion by the United States and South Korea.

It’s as realistic to expect a U.S. invasion of North Korea as it is to expect us to invade Angolia but realism never enters the equation when it comes to Kim’s thinking.

Iran’s equally unstable nutcase, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes similar threats, threatens missile and nuclear strikes-when Iran’s nuke facilities are up and running-and now demands the United States apologize for 60 years of wrongs against Iran: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/mahmoud_ahmadinejad/index.html

Mahmoud’s very selective memory must have “dis-remembered” when his Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the illegal storming and seizure of our Tehran embassy in 1979. I have to assume that he does not consider imprisoning 52 Americans for 444 days as something worthy of an Iranian apology.

There is, however, another explanation, namely that Mahmoud clearly recalls President Jimmy Carter’s feckless response to that grave offense and he seriously does expect an apology from President Obama.

He may get it if Obama fails this test.

Iran and North Korea are comparative pipsqueaks on the world stage and their incessant testing could be ended within weeks, or days, if Obama summons the nerve to advise both nations that, starting with their leaders, they will be reduced to molten puddles should they dare any funny business.

Fat chance, but hope springs eternal.

More ominous tests, one clearly and intentionally “generated” by a wannabe superpower, the other the result of an inept government allowing drug criminals to go berserk on their own soil, are on Obama’s horizon.

The inept government is that of Mexico’s Felipe Calderon and his ineptitude is a test for Obama mainly because of Mexico’s 2000 mile border with the United States and the four states immediately adjacent to Mexico. Exacerbating the danger is the fact that Mexico’s criminal element now is overflowing into those states, and further north. Houston is already feeling the effects of the infestation of Mexican drug cartels in town; there are at least five such cartels operating in Houston and the gangsters who run them are wreaking havoc.

Mexico, of course, is a tough test for Obama because of its proximity and because of long-term plans for the eventual establishment of a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.

That NAU has been in the works since the Bush I years and involves a virtual surrender of U.S. sovereignty and an “amero” to replace the dollar as our legal currency. Our leaders, of both parties, have already been implementing facets of the NAU. Absurd? The NAU is anything but absurd and Obama’s challenge right now is to repulse this most blatant invasion from Mexico without offending our NAU partner.

Last but hardly least of Obama’s tests and challenges is the People’s Republic of China. Having secured international recognition and esteem with its highly-scripted, manipulated, but very successful summer Olympic Games in 2008, China has no further need to act civilized with the Tibetans or the Taiwanese, or with the United States.

Prefatory to repressing the followers of the Dalai Lama in Tibet and attacking Taiwan, a little evaluation of Obama’s mettle was in order and China began that evalauation on the seas off its coast.

Five Chinese ships surrounded, “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, on Sunday, March 8, with one ship coming within 25 feet, a U.S. Defense Department statement said:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSPEK9458120090310?sp=true

Unprovoked, in a scene reminiscent of but far less bloody than Israel’s 1947 attack on the USS Liberty, the Chinese contended the Impeccable was conducting “illegal surveillance,” even though the American ship (like the Liberty) was in international waters and operating within the bounds of all laws governing military vessels on the high seas.

All reports suggest there will be no lasting effects on Chinese-American relations as a result of this maritime confrontation, which is probably true. However, the inscrutable Chinese had succeeded in one mission: They had successfully tested President Obama. His and America’s response? A stern reprimand, which China threw back in our faces, which rendered the reprimand a waste of effort on our part.

More testing is sure to come, especially since China now knows it has a weak and ineffectual American president more committed to words than to actions to deal with.

Meanwhile, waiting patiently in the wings, are Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the puppet Dmitry Medvedev, waiting patiently to see how well Obama fares with the easy tests before he and we are hit with the real toughies.

Gene Lalor is the author of An Immodest Proposal for Ending and Winning the War on Terror, available at Amazon.com

(http://genelalor.com/)

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