Don’t Menshn Barack Obama

The observation by Barack Obama that he (and probably his successor, whatever their stripe) would prefer Britain to remain an EU member state has not gone down well with all those who work in the service of Creepy Uncle Rupe, who bows to no man in his detestation of any Democratic Party politician. So it was no surprise to see (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch dutifully kicking the Prez in her latest Sun column.

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

We can read all of the tedious drivel as her witterings are not considered worthy of putting behind the Sun’s paywall, right from the headline, “Disastrous, weak Obama might as well quack it all in … We don’t need to listen to him on EU”, to the lame “SO Barack Obama thinks the UK needs to stay in the EU. ‘Quack quack, special relationship quack,’ the US president reportedly said … What? Sorry, I was translating it into ‘lame duck’ — what they call a useless politician on their way out”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start.

It’s just lies and spin, from beginning to end. “He said we need to bow to Brussels”, she claims. No he didn’t. “Nobody paid him any attention over Greece’s debt crisis”, she wibbles. Not a US issue. “He did sod all to stop President Putin when he invaded the Ukraine”. It’s not called “the Ukraine”, and what does she want the US to do? Start World War 3? “Obama even allowed Russia to host fugitive whistleblower Ed Snowden”.

Terrible, eh? The USA doesn’t stick its bugle into other countries’ internal affairs. But then it gets seriously stupid. “He wrapped up with [?] an Iranian ‘deal’ that will do nothing to stop the mad mullahs developing nukes”. The Iranian “deal” - not yet finalised - provides for an unprecedented level of monitoring, and, yes, stops Iran “developing nukes”.

Can’t she get one thing right? Nope: “some brave Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011, in an operation started by President Bush”. Yes Ms Mensch, it took the Navy Seals two and a half years to get to northern Pakistan. How about health care reform? “Even at home, his Obamacare health programme is unpopular”. Yeah, right. That’s why the percentage of US citizens without cover is at its lowest ever.

Let’s cut the crap: only the most wilful and blinkered right-winger can fail to concede that Obama has been one of the great Presidents. Quite apart from bringing Iran in from the cold and effectively pointing the country to the west, he has ended the pointless stand-off with Cuba, bringing that country into the mainstream for the first time in over 50 years. And Ms Mensch’s claim that he’s doing nothing on Syria is also bunk.

Otherwise, how did all those US warplanes get there? His approval ratings, which one might expect to be poor for a Prez late in the second term, are holding up well. Even now, there are new initiatives: “Executives from 13 major U.S. corporations will announce Monday at least $140 billion in new investments to decrease their carbon footprints as part of a White House initiative to recruit private commitments ahead of a United Nations climate-change summit later this year in Paris”, announced Bloomberg news today.

While Louise Mensch sits there in her upmarket Manhattan bunker, the world has moved on. Meanwhile, her puerile sniping shows just how out of touch she is. Sad, really.