Obama chooses The View over meeting world leaders

Chuck Todd, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper all agree.  Why would President Barack Obama not schedule meetings with world leaders on the first day of the United Nations meetings in New York, choosing instead to appear with his wife on The View?

I understand why Michelle would go, but with all that's going on in the world, why doesn't Obama himself put forth more of an effort to build one-on-one relationships with leaders of other countries?  in the linked clip, Jon Meacham goes into more detail with Joe Scarborough about how Obama doesn't try to build relationships with foreign leaders or Republicans or even Democratic leaders.

You can say Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have done everything they can to block Obama, but you know, George W. Bush still found a way to get things done with Nancy Pelosi and Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, and Bill Clinton found his way around Bob Dole and Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert.  George H.W. Bush was one of the best at building relationships with foreign leaders.

Meanwhile, Obama's best line in his UN speech:

"A politics based only on anger – one based on dividing the world between us and them – not only sets back international cooperation, it ultimately undermines those who tolerate it. All of us have an interest in standing up to these forces. Let us remember that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism. On the same day our civilians were killed in Benghazi, a Turkish police officer was murdered in Istanbul only days before his wedding; more than ten Yemenis were killed in a car bomb in Sana’a; and several Afghan children were mourned by their parents just days after they were killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul."

His worst line:

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

The Never-Ending Cycle of Middle East Violence

Found this column from Mark LeVine, who points out that Coptics were constant victims under the Mubarak regime in Egypt.  It's long, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

Some take-aways:

"In this particular case, decades of oppression and abuse of Egypt's Coptic minority has led some members of the community living in exile to join forces with some of the most chauvinist, hate-filled and Islamophobic groups in the American evangelical community and (posing as an Israeli Jew, no less), to produce a work that according to his associates was expected, and likely designed, to provoke precisely the kind of anger and even bloodshed it succeeded in producing.

"Unless you know Egyptian Copts personally have listened to their stories of abuse and violence at the hands of their Muslim Egyptian neighbours, it's hard to understand why an expatriate community member would waste time and money in producing such a cheap polemic guaranteed to lead to even more violence against his community back home, not to mention the global blowback that was equally inevitable."

....

"Americans and Europeans are no doubt looking at the protests over the "film", recalling the even more violent protests during the Danish cartoon affair, and shaking their heads one more at the seeming irrationality and backwardness of Muslims, who would let a work of "art", particularly one as trivial as this, drive them to mass protests and violence.

Yet Muslims in Egypt, Libya and around the world equally look at American actions, from sanctions against and then an invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sent the country back to the Stone Age, to unflinching support for Israel and all the Arab authoritarian regimes (secular and royal alike) and drone strikes that always seem to kill unintended civilians "by mistake", and wonder with equal bewilderment how "we" can be so barbaric and uncivilised."

On Benghazi and Cairo

Could the deaths of a US ambassador and three others been avoided?

The UK's Independent is reporting that the US State Department had information 48 hours in advance of the attacks on the Embassies in Egypt and Libya, and yet no warnings were given. According to "senior diplomatic sources," Chris Stevens had only been back in Libya a short while and his visit to Benghazi was confidential.

Now there are missing sensitive documents from the consulate, and the more they investigate, the more it looks like these attacks were planned and coordinated.  Patrick Kennedy of the State Department has said as much.

Now you may have heard about a little film called Innocence of Muslims.  Looking at the timelines of events, it's clear the attacks on the embassy in Cairo were planned before word of the "movie" leaked out.  No one had heard of it until the filmmakers put a 14-minute video of the trailer on YouTube dubbed into Arabic last week, and it was seized upon by Sheikh Khaled Abdalla, who hosts a show on the Egyptian TV channel Al-Nas (and he's a fundamentalist).

The "movie" itself, I keep putting in quotes, was allegedly shown one time on one screen in LA to an audience of about ten people.  The 14-minute video was put on YouTube in July to no fanfare. It was only after the Arabic version was put out that its publicity grew and spread.

What was the goal of the movie?  Solely to generate violence by Islamic extremists.

Here's why I say that.

The Wall Street Journal published quotes from the alleged filmmaker Sam Bacile where he claimed Islam is "a cancer" and that his film was funded by "100 Jewish donors." (I haven't seen the actual interview, but I pulled these from the NYTimes quoting from it.)  He also claimed to be an Israeli-born Jewish American.  Turns out Bacile is actually Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian, an Egyptian-American con-man.  Nakoula worked with Steve Klein on the film.  Klein is the founder of Courageous Christians United, which specializes in protesting mosques, LDS temples, and abortion clinics.  The film was also promoted by pastor Terry Jones.  You remember him.  The guy who burned Korans on 9/11 a couple years ago.

The Coptics are the largest Christian sect in Egypt, but they only make up 10% of the population and are often victims of violence from Islamic extremists.  Nakoula knew that getting this out there would set off the extremists.  He made sure to emphasize American and Jewish involvement.

It doesn't appear many people beyond Nakoula and Klein knew the intent of the film when it was being made.  The cast and crew have come out with shock and outrage about the filmmaker's true intentions.  They thought they were making a movie called Desert Warrior about an Egyptian named George from 2000 years ago.  All references to Islam and Muhammad were dubbed in afterwards.

Is the filmmaker solely to blame for Christopher Stevens' death?  No.  He and Klein and Jones knew what they were doing, but the people who actually killed Stevens are to blame, and while arrests can be made, the greater plan of the terrorists in Cairo and Benghazi wasn't so much to protest America but to destabilize their own governments.  Amazing how radical Christian and Muslim fundamentalists are helping achieve each other's goals.

It's important to remember that the people of Libya generally like the United States.  They loved Chris Stevens' role in helping transition from the Qaddafi dictatorship to their new parliamentary government.  Prime Minister Abdurrahim Al-Kib was swift to denounce the killings.  Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi eventually did so as well, but Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood candidate and has a finer line to walk.  This can help explain why Pres. Barack Obama went so far as to call Morsi's regime "not an ally" but "not an enemy."  He later walked that back, but the statement did nothing to ease tensions in Cairo. (And hey, did you know Morsi got his PhD from USC and that two of his children are US-born citizens?)

So the protests are spreading, with them happening in Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.  The different extremists groups will continue to attempt destabilization.  The Salafists and the al-Qaeda splinter groups will fan the flames.  This story's nowhere near over.  But here's a final word on it from Time's Ashraf Khalil:

"The image of Egyptians tearing down the American flag instantly damns Morsy’s efforts to project an atmosphere of stability and post-revolution order. In a moment of depressing irony, the news of the embassy incident broke during the closing press conference of a U.S.-sponsored trade delegation in Egypt—with American CEOs hailing Egypt as a prime spot for foreign investment."

DNC Winners & Losers

WINNER - Bill Clinton.  His folksy, rambling, wonky red meat for the blue crowd was the speech of the week.  Some in the crowd were probably wishing for a repeal of the 22nd Amendment by the time he was done.  Or thinking making him First Gentleman in 2016 is close enough.

LOSER - Jennifer Granholm.  The Michigan governor turned Current TV host came out to throw some haymakers at Mitt Romney.  She wound up indicting herself more than Mitt by trying to somehow blame Bain Capital for not bailing out GM. "And then the cavalry rode iiiiiiin!"  She started as Howard Dean and ended as Hacksaw Jim Duggan. "USA! USA! Hoooooooo!"

WINNER - The delegates. Overall, they had more emotion than the RNC delegates, be it ovations or tears.  Lotta crying in the crowd actually.  More celebrities and rock stars to see too.

LOSER - God.  He was removed from the platform, then put back in despite not getting the 2/3 vocal support to change the platform back. And the hashtag #TheyBooedGod was born.  The camera caught the Arab-American Democrats not happy about the Jerusalem addition too.  And to top it off, the platform change was in the TelePrompter before the vote was taken.

WINNER - Michelle Obama - What are the main things she gets criticized for? Pushing healthy food?  That witch.  The biography's always a nice ingredient to a convention week.

LOSER - Debbie Wasserman-Schultz - Now whenever Anderson Cooper talks to her, he can only shake his head and ask what color the sky is in her world.

WINNER - The military - They had more lip-service and actual speakers at the DNC than the RNC, including an Admiral.  Not to mention Vietnam vet John Kerry getting to say the line "Ask Osama bin Laden if he's better off now than he was four years ago."

LOSER - The economy - The morning after, we learned the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% only because 368,000 more people have given up looking for work.

WINNER - The ticket's likeability - Obama's still capable of soaring words and a gospel edge to his message.  In speech battles, 49 times out of 50, Obama's going to get people quicker to their feet than Romney could.  And Biden's like a favorite uncle.  But....

LOSER - The ticket's speeches - Biden's speech was literally rambling in a way nowhere near as effective as when Clinton did it.  You could literally feel the Obama campaign holding their breath that he wouldn't say anything too literally stupid.  Meanwhile, Obama's speech felt like one of a hundred speeches he's given.  Anecdotal, some hope and change, but more of a "things will be tough; temper your expectations" tone to it.  So both presidential candidates failed to be the highlights of their own conventions.

Overall, I did watch more of the RNC speeches than DNC, but looking at all the reactions, I'd say Dems have the edge.  Obama had a slight lead going in, and he has a slight lead coming out.  This makes the first debate between Obama and Romney all the more important for Romney.  Unlike 2008, where it became clear McCain had no chance by September after the financial collapse, I think Romney still has a chance here.  The economy's still sluggish.  Even if the Dow's back up to 13000, middle America is still being hammered by unemployment, stagnant wages, high gas prices, rising costs in health care and education, and lowered home values.

But it always comes down to the swing states, and from what I can see, Romney won't win the presidency unless he wins Ohio and Florida.  I think Ohio's going to be the key to the whole election.  A week's a lifetime in politics; something huge could happen that changes everything.