[guest post by Dana]
In an interview with Steve Kroft tonight on 60 Minutes, President Obama offered his view of real leadership in response to Kroft’s insistence that Putin is directly challenging the president’s leadership:
My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris.
My definition of leadership is mobilizing the entire world community to make sure that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.
The first is just downright embarrassing; the second is laughable, especially considering the devastating Iran nuclear deal the president recently forced upon us.
–Dana
A classic Onion piece from 1997 is making the rounds on the Facebook today. I thought it might be worth sharing here.
HEBRON, WEST BANK—In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.
[Caption: Faisal al Hamad, seen here shrieking anti-U.S. slogans, says that “not every crazed Palestinian gunman is exactly alike.”]
“As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media,” said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. “None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance.”
He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.
“It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people,” al Hamad said. “We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual.”
Al Hamad said that he himself has often been unfairly stereotyped. “Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I’m going to open fire,” he said. “That really hurts.”
“Yes, I sometimes do gun people down in the name of the One True God,” he noted. “But there is so much more to me.”
Read it all.
P.S. If you were following Patterico on the Facebook you would already have read that!
P.P.S. I’m also on the Twitters.
As the silly season continues, CBS News reports that Trump is still on top and Ben Carson is still second. The real lede, however, is buried in paragraph two. Guess who’s #3? If you didn’t read the headline, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer:
The rest of the Republican field is in single digits, with Texas Senator Ted Cruz inching up into third place with nine percent, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio with eight percent. Businesswoman Carly Fiorina and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush follow at six percent each. Former Governor Mike Huckabee has also slipped considerably since the summer, from eight percent in August to just two percent today.
Cruz has been running a very strong ground game in Iowa and is well poised for the SEC primaries. Also, as the flash-in-the-pans start to fade (hopefully), and Cruz gets more facetime with the American people, voters will start to see that he doesn’t come across like the nasty guy Big Media says he is.
And he is smart as a whip. He would crucify Hillary Clinton in any debate. Rubio can’t. He’s too callow.
I’m still banking on Cruz. In my morose moods I worry a little that the electorate will fall for the empty celebrity of a Trump. But on an early Sunday afternoon on this lovely Columbus Day weekend, I am feeling good about Ted Cruz.