President Obama

When it comes to NATO and the West you can always find a contradiction or two (or five) when it comes to foreign policy rhetoric which is why we weren’t at all surprised (although we were amused) with what we found when we decided to take a look back at what Erdogan said in 2012 after Assad’s air force shot down a Turkish F-4 phantom jet when it crossed into Syrian airspace.

With Americans facing a day of travel and giving thanks tomorrow, President Obama is set to make a statement we presume urging everyone to get out and spend... but be more alert to bad guys...

Following yesterday's dramatic geopolitical shock, U.S. equity index futures rise as Russia has not escalated the confrontation with Turkey as some had feared, while Asian shares fall, reversing earlier gains. European stocks are rallying and the euro is falling on the back of a Reuters report that the ECB is mulling new measures to prop up lending, although it’s not clear at this point what the real impact from these measures would be.

• Turkey downs Russian warplane near Syria border, Moscow denies airspace violation (Reuters)
• Investors seek safety in bonds, yen after Turkey downs Russian jet (Reuters)
• Donald Trump Is Not Backing Down (BBG)
• Uber's Exposure May Grow as U.S. Drivers Seek 57.5 Cents a Mile (BBG)
• U.S. issues global travel alert as manhunt continues for Paris attackers (Reuters)
• Stung by Oil, Distressed-Debt Traders See Worst Losses Since '08 (BBG)

The American people have been forced to pay untold millions for a ten-year CIA and Pentagon program to undermine and overthrow the Syrian government, and now we are supposed to pay millions more to provide welfare for the refugees Obama created. If Obama wants to take in refugees from the chaos in Syria, there are probably plenty of vacant rooms in the White House.

Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it, those that do understand are doomed to watch in horror while everyone else repeats it.

"The Islamic State has grown that strong due to the irresponsible policy of the United States," exclaimed Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev this morning, demanding that "really consolidated efforts" are needed to counter ISIS' terrorist threats. This comes just hours after President Obama toughened his rhetoric, vowing that the global coalition formed to destroy ISIS "will not relent," adding, rather oddly, that the group responsible for the Paris terror attacks is "a bunch of killers with good social media."

There are so many strands of lies and distortions that it is now almost impossible for Official Washington to disentangle itself from all the false narratives that the neocons and the liberal hawks have spun in support of their various “regime change” strategies. So, the American people are left with the mainstream U.S. news media endlessly repeating storylines that are either completely false or highly exaggerated. Official Washington’s many false narratives about Russia and Syria have gotten so tangled that they have become a danger to the struggle against jihadist terrorism and conceivably a threat to the future of the planet.

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" – Partrick Henry, American Founding Father, 1775

"They value their civil liberties more than they value life. I disagree with that. You want to be free and dead? I’d rather be not free and alive" – Billionaire Hillary Clinton donor Haim Saban, 2015

The 'Great Recession' was evidently so bad for the economy that it stopped the net influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico. For the first time since the 1940s, more Mexicans have been leaving the U.S. to return home than arriving, a reversal that brings down the curtain on the largest immigration wave in modern American history. As WSJ reports, the Pew Research Center figures released Thursday suggest that the surge in legal and illegal Mexican immigration that helped transform America - and remains a contentious issue on the presidential campaign trail - may have peaked for good.

Obamaworld is gone. We live again in an us-versus-them country in an us-versus-them world. And we shall likely never know another.

With 53% of Americans opposed to opening the nation’s borders to those fleeing the war-torn Middle Eastern nation, it is perhaps no surprise that The House just voted overwhelmingly to slap stringent - and difficult to implement - new screening procedures on refugees from Syria seeking resettlement. While 47 Democrats defied President Obama's; due to absences, the vote did not quite nullify the threat of veto, without which the bill would  effectively suspend the entry of refugees into the US for months or years.

"And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago."

“Apparently, it’s a kind of a ‘honey is sweet, but the bee stings’ situation: they want IS to weaken Assad as soon as possible to make him leave somehow, but at the same time they don’t want to overly strengthen IS, which may then seize power."