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1.) Has Obama seen a newspaper lately? — Judging from his speech to the United Nations Tuesday, the answer seems to be no. TheDC’s Caroline May reports:
“President Obama told the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday morning that the ‘world is more stable now than it was five years ago.’ ‘Just as we reviewed how we deploy our extraordinary military capabilities in a way that lives up to our ideals, we’ve begun to review the way that we gather intelligence so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share,’ he said. ‘As a result of this work and cooperation with allies and partners, the world is more stable than it was five years ago,’ he added.”
Perhaps one of his advisers could inform him what’s happening in, oh, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Iraq, just to name a few countries in one region of the world. Is he serious?
2.) We were once strong — America can’t get no respect anymore. TheDC’s Neil Munro reports:
“Iran’s new president spurned a meeting with President Barack Obama Sept. 24, despite repeated invites from Obama’s staff. ‘What we indicated is, again, what we’ve been saying publicly, which is we’re open to the two leaders having an encounter here at UNGA, not a formal meeting,’ a White House officials told reporters at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, on Sept. 24. ‘We had discussions at a working level with them and ultimately it became clear that that was too complicated for them at this time,’ the official admitted. Obama had hoped to meet Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s new president. He was elected to the post after being nominated by the top layer of Iran’s theocratic government, the Guardian Council.”
Remember when America was a superpower? Now we beg to meet leaders of third-rate powers. And in this case, the leader our president was begging to meet isn’t even the one who wields the real power in his country.
3.) Stark stakes — Ted Cruz took the Senate floor Tuesday to make his case for defunding Obamacare. He sees the battle as big as any America has ever confronted. TheDC’s Alexis Levinson reports:
“Texas Sen. Ted Cruz likened politicians and political observers who said Republicans could not succeed in repealing Obamacare to those who said the Nazis could never be defeated. In a speech on the Senate floor, urging the Senate to support defunding Obamacare in the bill they must pass to continue funding the government, Cruz said those who said it could not be done were throwing in the towel too early. ‘I suspect those same pundits who say it can’t be done, if it had been in the 1940′s we would have been listening to them. … They would have been on TV and they would have been say, you cannot defeat the Germans,’ Cruz said.”
4.) Culture matters — Whether it is good or bad, to be president these days, you’ve got to be in touch with the culture. Or at least so says historian Tevi Troy, author of the new book, “What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House.” TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein reports:
“Troy, who served as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services under George. W Bush and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argued that being in touch with the culture is now important for any presidential contender. ‘It is clearly helpful if not mandatory to be in touch with the popular culture when running for any office, but especially the presidency,’ he said. ‘I would not say that [Mitt] Romney was culturally illiterate, but he was out of touch. When he made cultural references, they tended to be to ‘Seinfeld’ or to ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ which were funny, but also two decades old. He definitely could have done better on the culture front, but one of the lessons of my book is that pop cultural literacy is very hard to fake.'”
Read the full interview for interesting insights and bizarre anecdotes, like the fact Jimmy Carter watched a staggering “480 films in one term in the White House.”
5.) Tweet of Yesterday — David Burge: Stop worrying about what the rest of the world thinks of us, and start making the rest of the world worry about what we think of them.
6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “Day of Songun Celebrated by World Progressives”