FLASHBACK: Obama is “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

As we witness the invasion and takeover of Crimea by Russia’s Putin, and amid the destruction being wreaked by Obamacare, one particular quote keeps coming back to me like an annoying song refrain that I can’t seem to shake.

It’s from the 2010 book The Bridge written by New Yorker editor David Remnick, and was uttered by Barack Obama’s most loyal and trusted counsel, Valerie Jarrett:

 “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is.

And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . .

Why we should NOT attack #Syria….

I’ve avoided discussing the whole “will-he-or-won’t-he” babbling regarding President Obama and Syria until now, choosing to read all of the many rationales for our traipsing into another complex, murky battle. Having digested plenty of arguments, both pro- and con-, I have no choice but to come down firmly on the “No” side.

This isn’t just because there are no clear-cut “good guys” here, although trying to figure out who to root for/against in Syria makes the ’90s Bosnian War look like an old Lone Ranger episode. Nor am I against lobbing warheads into Syria simply due to us conservatives “hating this President“. As a lowly blogger, my decision isn’t even slightly political, even though there are lots of political nuances affecting this vote, on all sides.

Bottom line: I don’t trust Obama’s judgement with this, because I don’t believe HE wants to be there.

And if history has shown us anything, it’s that when the leader of a country doesn’t absolutely want to be IN a conflict, it’s unlikely they’re going to WIN the conflict.